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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
PRINCETON. N. J. 


PRESENTED BY 


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Thomas, Moses Bross, 1845- 
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THE BROSS LIBRARY 


VOLUME XII 


THE BROSS LIBRARY 


THE BIBLE; ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE 
Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D. 


THE BIBLE OF NATURE. J. Arthur Thomson, M.A. 


THE RELIGIONS OF MODERN SYRIA AND 
PALESTINE. Frederick J. Bliss, Ph.D. 


THE SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS INSIGHT 
Josiah Royce 


THE WILL TO FREEDOM, or the Gospel of 
Wietsche and the Gospel of Christ 
Rev. John Neville Figgis, D.D. 


FAITH JUSTIFIED BY PROGRESS 
H. W. Wright, Ph.D. 
BIBLE AND SPADE 
John P. Peters, Ph.D., Sc.D., D.D. 


CHRISTIANITY AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 
By Various Authors 
THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 


M. Bross Thomas, A.M., D.D. 


BROSS PRIZE VOLUMES 


THE PROBLEM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
James Orr, D.D. 


THE MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE 
GOSPELS. Rev. Thomas James Thorburn, D.D. 





THE BROSS LECTURES . . 1988 


THE 
BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 


LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE 
LAKE FOREST COLLEGE 
ON THE FOUNDATION OF THE LATE 
WILLIAM BROSS 


BY 
REV. M. BROSS THOMAS, A.M., D.D. 


PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF BIBLICAL LITHRATURE 
OF LAKH FOREST COLLEGE 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
IN Vas OTUs aecreneg ca Oran h va 


Coprrriaat, 1924, py 
THE TRUSTEES OF LAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY 





Printed in the United States of America 





FOREWORD 


In writing these lectures I have had an audience in 
mind rather than readers. This accounts for some- 
what of repetition and also for a certain directness of 
address. I have also had in view those whom Mr. 
Lincoln called “the plain people,” that large number 
of Christian men and women who are interested in 
the great truths of the Bible but are not familiar with 
the works of those scholars who deal largely and mi- 
nutely with its history, structure, composition, author- 
ship, and those details which are found in books of 
Introduction. If the author can be of any help to 
those who seek for guidance and confirmation of faith 
in the midst of the controversies of the present day, 
which too much tend to weaken, if not destroy, belief 
in the Bible’s divine origin and in its teaching con- 
cerning the nature, character, and eternal purpose of 
the God of Revelation, he will consider his work not 
to have been in vain. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/biblicalideaofgo00thom 


II. 


eT; 


IV. 


we 


CONTENTS 


THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD, ConcrETE 
IN PRESENTATION, PERSONAL, MONOTHEISTIC, 
QprRITUAL. ORDER IN TIME OF THE BOOKs . 


THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 1 Tue PRIMI- 
TIVE AND ParriarcHAL Prriops, ss SET 
TIGHTELIN (OINESISH AS ce declla eis ie coreiiouiber 3 


THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 1n THE Mo- 
satc PERIOD, oR AS Founp 1n Exopvus, Levit- 
1cus, NUMBERS, AND DEUTERONOMY 


THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD DvuRING THE 
PERIOD OF THE JUDGES, THE TIMES OF ELIJAH 
AND ELISHA, AND IN THE WRITINGS OF THE 
POOP RTS uae Aisin RiLamie ee Mis Ge Bag eta ete 


THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 1. THE PsALMs, 
Jos, AND ECCLESIASTES . .- +--+ e+e > 


THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 1n THE TEACH- 
ING oF CHRIST AND His APOSTLES ..... 


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31 


65 


92 


124 


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THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 


I 
THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 


CONCRETE IN PRESENTATION, PERSONAL, MONOTHEISTIC, 
SPIRITUAL. ORDER IN TIME OF THE BOOKS 


Tur first sentence of Calvin’s “Institutes of the 
Christian Religion” is as follows: “True and substan- 
tial wisdom principally consists of two parts, the knowl- 
edge of God and the knowledge of ourselves.” He 
then proceeds to show the intimate relation and inter- 
dependence of these two kinds of knowledge. Both are 
necessary for man’s highest welfare. But since God is 
the greatest object of knowledge, to know him is rela- 
tively more important than to know ourselves. The 
Greeks, by their adage, “ Know thyself,” seem to have 
placed the greater emphasis upon the latter; but the 
Bible places it upon the former. Our Lord, in his 
prayer at the close of the last supper, said: “'This is life 
eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God 
and Jesus Christ whom Thou didst send” (John 17: 3). 
Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, wrote that he did 
not cease to pray, that “the God of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit 
of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him” 
(Eph. 1:17); and to the Philippians that their “love 

1 


2 The Biblical Idea of God 


may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all 
discernment”? (Phil. 1:9), and also to the Colossians, 
that they “may be filled with the knowledge of his 
[that is, God’s] will in all spiritual wisdom and under- 
standing . . . and increasing in the knowledge of God” 
(Col. 1:9, 10). Indeed, it is not possible here and now 
to quote the passages in which emphasis is placed upon 
such knowledge. If you look up these words, knowl- 
edge and to know, where God is the object, you may be 
surprised to find how often they are used. They ap- 
pear with striking frequency in the Old Testament, they 
occur again and again in the New Testament, either 
explicitly stated or implied. Hence it is not true, as is 
sometimes said, that religion, at least the religion of 
the Bible, consists merely or mainly of emotion. That 
the emotional nature, in its deepest and noblest ele- 
ments, is involved is true, but it is also true that it is 
knowledge, the knowledge of God, that awakens and 
determines the character of the emotions, and gives 
and sustains their life and austere beauty. Agnosti- 
cism, so prevalent in our day, the hopeless conclusion 
of so many philosophic minds striving to solve the chal- 
lenging mystery of the universe, asserts the unknow- 
ableness of God. It neither affirms nor denies his exist- 
ence. It simply says: “I do not, I cannot know.” It 
is, as President Mark Hopkins used to say, “The know- 
nothing philosophy.” But the Bible says that God is 
and can be known, and that “he is a rewarder of them 
that seek after him” (Heb. 11:6). It makes no elab- 
orate argument to prove his existence. Its opening 


Human Ideas, Religious and Scientific 3 


words imply that as the instinctive belief of man. For 
man, as Aristotle defined him, is a “rational animal.” 
Being rational, he is therefore essentially religious. To 
worship is the universal and compelling impulse of his 
nature; and worship implies the conviction of an object 
worthy of that worship. 

But believing in a being or beings greater than him- 
self, to whom he has everywhere built altars and offered 
prayers and sacrifices, man has yet clothed that being 
or those beings with attributes suggested by his own 
evil nature or with conceptions formed from the philo- 
sophic contemplation of the world around him and his 
own rational nature. The Iliad, which has been called 
the Bible of the Greeks, ascribed to Zeus and the fam- 
ily of the gods the vices of human society, so that 
Plato would banish the Iliad from his ideal republic. 
But Greek philosophy wrought out a conception of the 
divine nature and character which, while less merely 
human than that of the Iliad, was yet ineffective to 
touch man’s heart and transform his life, and was the 
object of contemplation and discussion only, and was 
confined to the intellectual few. The common people 
still worshipped their human gods. 

Yet however inadequate or false such conceptions 
are, man by his very nature seems compelled to form 
them. Human thought in its ultimate aim is really a 
quest after God. It seeks for a unity in the endless 
variety of the world and for a fundamental truth which 
shall explain all things. The speculative thought of the 
physical scientists is not satisfied to rest with the many 


4 The Biblical Idea of God 


and varied forces and forms with which they deal but 
affirms an infinite and eternal energy of which all forces 
and forms are but the ever-changing manifestation. 
Ascribe personality and moral character to this infinite 
and eternal energy and we may rightly name it God. 

That God is is one question. What he is is another. 
The Bible assumes the first and answers the second. 
Its answer, moreover, claims to be a direct revelation 
of God himself; a revelation not in the works of nature, 
in the starlit heavens above, nor in the earth with its 
manifold forms of life beneath, although the Bible 
teaches that these declare him; nor in the mind and 
conscience of man, intuitive of universal and necessary 
truths, and imposing an imperative moral law; although 
Paul at Athens built an argument on these; but in a 
spoken and written word given to man and through 
man, and because divinely given is therefore authori- 
tative and complete. 

This is the plain statement of the opening words of 
the epistle to the Hebrews: “God having of old time 
spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers por- 
tions and in divers manners hath at the end of these 
_ days spoken unto us in a Son.” And then the author 
goes on to characterize the Son as having been “ap- 
pointed heir of all things, through whom also he made 
the worlds; who being the effulgence of his glory, and 
the very image of his substance, and upholding all 
things by the word of his [the Son’s] power, when he 
[the Son] had made purification of sins, sat down on 
the right hand of the Majesty on high; having become 


Teaching of Epistle to the Hebrews 5 


by so much better than the angels, as he hath inherited 
a more excellent name than they” (Heb. 1: 1-4). 

In this introduction, remarkable both for the truths 
it teaches and for their eloquent expression, the author 
states in explicit terms one essential and fundamental 
fact. It is that God has spoken. This underlies and 
runs through the entire sentence, which consists also of 
a series of striking contrasts. In the past God spoke 
unto the fathers. In the present he has spoken unto 
us. Then he spoke “by divers portions and in divers 
manners.” Now he has spoken in a way that is full 
and final and complete. Then he spoke in many men, 
the prophets. Now he has spoken in one, a Son. 

Thus the author (whoever he was, no one knows) 
reduces the many books which compose the Bible to 
an essential unity. To him both Old Testament and 
New are the word of God. The many and varied 
voices which sound through the long ages of Israel’s 
past have one elemental tone essentially divine; and 
this rises at last to full volume in the voice of Jesus 
Christ, who is both human and divine. 

This position taken at the outset by the author of 
Hebrews is that of these lectures. It has been held 
through long centuries and tested and confirmed by the 
experiences of many generations of believing men. It 
is the Bible’s estimate of itself. The prophets an- 
nounced it. The Lord Jesus and his apostles affirmed 
it. The Jewish and the Christian churches have al- 
ways and everywhere accepted it, the one as regards 
the Old Testament, the other as regards both. It is 


6 The Boblical Idea of God 


the unshaken foundation of their religious faith. But 
in these days, as also in earlier, it meets with limitation, 
or with denial and rejection. The religion of the Bible, 
many claim, is but one among the religions of the world, 
a merely natural human product. It has no higher 
source, no more divine authority. Its laws are merely 
fixed human customs; its prophecy and poetry the ex- 
pression of merely human experience, of human de- 
sires and hopes and aspirations. Nay, more; it is said 
to have been at last found out by scholars, whose re- 
searches, it is claimed, have been made in a thorough- 
going scientific spirit and with a rigorous scientific 
method, that much of the history recorded in the 
Scriptures, both old and new, is not a statement of 
fact but is largely fiction, the work of authors who 
either read their own present into the past, or filled the 
dim and distant past with unreal persons and fancied 
events. And the serious aspect of this denial and re- 
jection is that it no longer stands without the church, 
but has secured a place within. It is taught in school 
and college and theological seminaries. It is suggested 
or plainly stated in periodical and pulpit; and the books 
that uphold it issue constantly from the press. 

I do not question the sincerity of those who hold and 
promulgate this view. I suggest no doubt of their 
Christian character and life. It is not with men but 
with opinions that we have to deal. And it is clear 
that these two views concerning the religion of the 
Bible are radically different and opposed. ‘There is no 
neutral ground. If one is true the other is false. 


The Faith of the Church Vital 7 


However, into this question I do not propose now 
to enter. The books which seek to determine it are 
“many and accessible. The literary and historical crit- 
icism of the Bible now constitutes a library by itself. 
The first book for which a prize was given on this 
foundation, “The Problem of the Old Testament,” by 
Professor Orr, as also the second book, “The Mythical 
Interpretation of the Gospels,’ by Doctor Thomas 
James Thorburn, are most important parts of this li- 
brary and are conservative in their position. In sup- 
port of this position archeology is bringing many as- 
sured results obtained by recent investigation, and the 
scholars who uphold it are neither few nor lacking in 
learning and force of thought. 

Aside, moreover, from all other considerations it 
would be strange indeed if this age-long faith in the 
Bible were proven false. For the issue is vital. On 
that faith the Jewish and Christian churches were 
founded and by it they have lived. Destroy that faith 
and as distinctive organizations they will fall, if not at 
once, yet ultimately into a ruin final and complete. 
For if God has not spoken in prophet, in apostle, and 
in a Son, then certainly the Christian church has no 
distinctive message and no reason separately to exist. 
If in any way it should continue, it will become merely 
an ethical society without power to lift men to higher 
altitudes of character and thus secure its aims. But 
that God has spoken we may not doubt the church will 
continue to believe, despite the assaults of men, how- 
ever scholarly in attainments, however persistent in at- 


8 The Biblical Idea of God 


tack. And it may be that a result of the investigation 
we are to make, however imperfectly and inadequately 
we may make it, will help to the confirmation of that 
belief. For if the Biblical teaching concerning God is 
found to be noble in its character, consistent and pro- 
gressive in its unfolding, and meeting and satisfying 
the conditions and deepest needs of the human heart, 
then this is an argument for its truth which cannot be 
ignored nor lightly set aside. 

There are four general and essential points of view 
which at the outset should be distinctly stated. The 
first is that the Biblical idea of God is not abstract and 
speculative, but purely and wholly concrete. By this 
I mean that it is presented not merely as a subjective 
conception, but in objective form and as corresponding 
to an objective reality. In this respect it differs radi- 
cally from the idea of philosophy. Philosophers deal 
but little with the actual or concrete world. I do not 
deny that they are searchers after truth, but theirs is a 
quest ultimately for being, the most highly abstract of 
all ideas. They deal with the purely rational concep- 
tions of the mind, and in a highly rarefied atmosphere 
build airy structures, whose materials, however logi- 
cally related and finished in form, are not taken from 
the actual, every-day experiences of human life. The 
philosopher lives in his study among his books, or in 
his classroom, far from the actual world where men 
sin and suffer, toil and strive, hope and despair, aspire 
and fail; where appetite and passion and frenzied action 
constitute largely the experiences of mankind. His is 


Concrete in Presentation 9 


the strictly intellectual world, the world of pure 
thought, undisturbed by the ceaseless and agonizing 
conflicts which go on just beyond the walls that shut 
him in. 

Thus philosophy dwells among abstractions and is, 
as it has been defined since Socrates, a search after 
truth which, like the radiant rainbow arch, is ever flee- 
ing from its grasp.. The search is not without its com- 
pensations. The philosopher has done important work 
in the exploration of the abstract or ideal world. For 
such a world exists, and the desire to explore it 1s ever 
inciting the noblest minds, and the power to do so Is 
among the greatest gifts of man. Philosophy, it has 
been said, bakes no bread. It contributes nothing to 
satisfy the lower needs of man; but it deepens and ex- 
pands his reasoning powers and acquaints him with 
realities of which the sordid soul engaged altogether in 
ministering to animal wants does not dream. Yet, 
though it may teach important truths, the forms in 
which they are presented are beyond the reach of the 
ordinary eye, and the language in which they are 
uttered is strange to the ordinary ear. On the con- 
trary, the Biblical idea of God, while containing all 
the truth the philosopher has found, and indeed much 
more, is expressed in forms and in a language with 
which the ordinary man is familiarly acquainted. 
“The heavens,” the psalmist says, “declare the glory 
of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. 
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night 
showeth knowledge” (Psalms 19:1, 2). The same 


10 The Biblical Idea of God 


truth is stated in much the same way by the Apostle 
Paul to the people and priests of Lystra, when they 
would worship him and Barnabas, bidding them turn 
from their idols “unto a living God, who made the 
heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them 
is... and who left not himself without witness, in that 
he did good and gavé you from heaven rains and fruit- 
ful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness” 
(Acts 14:15, 17). 

In historic events also is the Biblical idea of God dis- 
closed—in the account of the creation and of the moral 
fall of man, in the migrations of peoples, in the experi- 
ences of persons, such as the call of Abraham, the mis- 
sion and work of Moses, the deliverance from Egypt, 
the giving of the law, the conquest of the promised 
land, the reigns of judges and of kings, the sending 
and work of the long line of prophetic men culminating 
in the coming and teaching and character and death 
and resurrection of the divine Son. All this is not a 
series of abstract statements but of actual, historic, 
concrete events and persons; and it is the only way in 
which for mankind the true idea of God could be ade- 
quately and effectively disclosed. 

The second general point of view is that the Biblical 
idea of God is purely personal. Made known in per- 
sons and in the experiences of persons, it could not well 
be other than personal. In this it again differs from 
what much of philosophy has taught. 

But, that we may have a clear conception of the term 
we are using, let us ask what is meant by a person. 


Personal 11 


It is a conception we all possess and act upon, but how 
few ever stop precisely to define it. It is like vision. 
We see and know that we see, but what it 1s to see—the 
physical apparatus and the mental processes involved— 
not many pause to consider. Yet the essential ele- 
ments of personality are not far to seek nor difficult 
to find. They are, as usually stated, self-consciousness 
and self-determination. Every one is immediately con- 
scious of thinking, of feeling, and of willing; and this 
consciousness is individual and distinctive. Moreover, 
it is an inward state of certainty. If man is not certain 
of these realities he is certain of nothing. He is also 
conscious, not merely that there are thoughts, emo- 
tions, choices, but that they are his thoughts, his emo- 
tions, fis choices, and not those of another. In this 
way he affirms himself as a separate and distinct entity. 
Hence in the unity of these three elemental modes of 
personal being he stands face to face with himself and 
has reached a sure basis and starting-point for all sub- 
sequent conclusions. When Descartes said, “Cogito 
ergo sum” (I think therefore I am), he stated a fact of 
which there could be no possible doubt. In the proc- 
ess of investigation he had put aside all other beliefs 
as doubtful, but here at last he reached the bed-rock 
of certainty. 

But philosophers have raised the question, what is 
the self ?—as if it were something different from these 
elemental and essential modes of its expression, as if 
the self were behind them and beyond conscious reach. 
But thought, emotion, volition do not mask but mani- 


12 The Biblical Idea of God 


fest the self. It is in the unity of these in conscious- 
ness that the self is known. 

The other attribute of personality, self-determina- 
tion, is a centre of long and intense controversy. That 
there are volitions or choices no one does or can deny. 
But that they are free, that is, self-determined, is_ 
denied. ‘The question is of profound interest to every 
one. Not only is it debated in the schools but among 
the unlearned as well. Milton, in “Paradise Lost,” 
makes some of the fallen spirits sit apart and reason 
high—— 


“Of Providence, Foreknowledge, will and fate — 
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute; 
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.” 

(Book 2, lines 559-561.) 


But no reasoning process can decide this question. 
Its decision can be rendered only by the direct deliver- 
ance of consciousness. The freedom of the will is an 
ultimate fact. Consciousness testifies to every one 
that his choices are determined by himself. It knows 
nothing of a higher power determining them. Even 
Herbert Spencer acknowledges that the consciousness 
of freedom is, to use his language, “an inexpugnable 
datum” of the human mind, that is, a state or affirma- 
tion of consciousness of which man cannot rid himself, 
although Spencer immediately proceeds to argue against 
its validity. This the exigencies of his philosophical 
system demanded. But the languages of the world 
and the structures of all human society are the expres- 


Personal 13 


sion of the universal and ultimate consciousness of the 
freedom of the will. To deny this is to affirm that 
man’s nature is at its heart a lie. 

To these attributes of self-consciousness and self- 
determination which are essential to personality there 
needs to be added a moral element. Animals are not 
persons, however self-conscious and_ self-determined 
they may be. They are wnmoral. They give no evi- 
dence of moral ideals or sense of moral obligation. 
But man does, and without these he would not be a 
person. That which presents these ideals is the con- 
science, a term formed of two Latin words, con and 
scio, which together mean, I know with. This is also 
the meaning of the Greek term for conscience, 
ouveldnows, a knowledge with. But what is it that 
I know? Is it not myself? And with what do I 
know myself? Is it not with, or in connection with, 
a law? But whose law? Not my law, self-imposed, 
for I find myself in conflict with it. Nor a law which 
other men have laid upon me. Human customs may 
indeed harden into law. But conscience, in its deep- 
est and widest affirmations, deep as the inmost heart 
of man, and wide as his social world, recognizes a law 
whose source is beyond the self, and whose authority 
is far more imperative than mankind’s collective 
will. 

Conscience, with its universal and ever-insistent 
claims, is the bed-rock on which rest all true ideas of 
both man and God. On it all false conceptions are 
inevitably wrecked. It is, as we shall see, elemental in 


14 The Biblical Idea of God 


the Biblical idea of the character of God, and pervades 
the entire Scriptures, both old and new. 

God, then, is personal in his nature, according to the 
Bible, a being self-conscious, self-determined and moral, 
not under law, as man is, nor superior to law, but 
a law unto himself, the ultimate source of all law and 
all authority, responsible unto none, but laying upon 
every man the imperative obligation of obedience to 
his supreme will. 

Not thus, however, do the philosophers of this world 
always teach. The religions of the world, even that 
of the most degraded peoples, present a god or gods 
personal in nature, and in some degree, however slight 
and elusive, both spiritual and moral, with other attri- 
butes essential to deity, which lift their conceptions 
sometimes to a lofty plane. Thus the Indians of 
Guiana speak of the “Ancient One, the Ancient One 
in Sky-land, Our Maker, Our Father, Our Great 
Father” (Lang, “The Making of Religion,” page 222). 
But philosophy, brooding over the deep mysteries of 
being, and using only the intellect for their solution, 
has ever tended toward the impersonal in its concep- 
tion of the ultimate and universal reality. This is the 
teaching of Pantheism and Materialism, whose charac- 
teristic note is ¢mpersonality. Man is the only personal 
being, and as such is but a passing and momentary 
wave upon the sea of infinite and universal existence. 
He rises for one brief instant into distinct and con- 
scious individuality and then sinks absolutely and for- 
ever into unconsciousness and bare onenesswith the All. 


One God and One Only 15 


Such a conclusion of the mere intellect may be logi- 
cally deduced from the premises employed, but it is 
against the deepest instincts, the strongest yearnings, 
and the imperative affirmations of the human soul. 
The philosophic minds of India, of Greece, and of some 
in these modern days have taught it, but the religions 
of all have rejected it; and religion, which is a univer- 
sal fact, has as much right to be heard as has philosophy. 

It is from his own conscious personality that man 
rises to his belief in the personality of God. These two 
beliefs stand or fall together. This is clearly evident 
from the history of philosophic thought in India. 
Resting on fundamental convictions of the human soul, 
they stand when these convictions are clearly recog- 
nized. They fall when these convictions are obscured 
or dissolved by speculations which forsake the realm of 
fact and wander in an unreal world of abstract dialec- 
tics. 

A third general point is the unity of God. The 
Bible teaches that there is one God and only one. Its 
religion is strictly monotheistic. In this respect it is 
radically different from the religions of the world. 
Polytheism, the worship of many gods, has apparently 
within historic times, been universal outside the He- 
brew race. Whether there was in the earliest day, 
when man first began to worship, a simple undeveloped 
monotheism, is a question upon which scholars are 
divided in opinion. Indications furnished by investi- 
gations of the historic and primitive periods show that 
man has always and everywhere been a worshipper, 


16 The Biblical Idea of God 


but whether of one or many gods the proofs thus ob- 
tained are too slight and shadowy to lead to a positive 
conclusion. Such investigations, however, take no 
account of the Bible. Its descriptions of human origins 
is ignored as merely mythical. Yet whether mythical 
or not, whether in any and what sense true or not, I 
do not here stop to consider. These questions, how- 
ever important, are beside our quest. This, as I have 
said, is simply to find out what the Bible teaches con- 
cerning God; and there can be no doubt that from its 
earliest chapters it is clearly and positively monotheis- 
tic. It records, however, and condemns the prevalent 
polytheism. All throughout Hebrew history, until 
after the captivity, there is a conflict between those 
who taught the sole deity of Jehovah and the common 
people, who were continually falling away from that 
belief. 'They were unable to resist the degrading influ- 
ence of the nations, great and small, with which they 
came in contact. These multiplied their deities, and 
in Babylonia and Egypt worshipped them in magnifi- 
cent temples and with elaborate and imposing forms. 
In Canaan, as the sacred record tells us, the Israelites 
again and again “forsook Jehovah, the God of their 
fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, 
and followed other gods” (Judges 2:12). Even the 
temple built for the sole worship of Jehovah was pol- 
luted by the infamous and debasing rites of alien peo- 
ples. To purify the Hebrew nation from idolatrous 
polytheism and to establish finally and forever the be- 
lief in one sole and supreme God was throughout long 


Spiritual he 


centuries the work not only of divinely commissioned 
prophets, but also of the bitter experiences which in- 
evitably followed their apostasies, culminating at last 
in the Babylonian captivity. 

The fourth general point is that the Biblical idea of 
God is spiritual. This is involved in the conception of 
him as moral or personal. But it may be asked, what 
is a spirit? Etymologically in both Greek and Latin, 
it means breath or to breathe. But these are physical 
terms used as figures of speech to express something 
like and yet different, in regard to which the thought 
of most men is far from being definite and clear. It is 
of something invisible, intangible, widely diffused, a 
sort of substance indescribable in positive terms. The 
definitions are usually negative. In the early days of 
my active ministry I remember seeking for a clear and 
positive definition of what is meant by spirit. The 
statement in theological and other books was that a 
spirit is an 7mmaterial substance. But that tells me 
what spirit is not. It does not tell me what spirit 2s. 
All that is affirmed is that a spirit is not matter. This 
doubtless comes from the common conviction that the 
material world is the real world. But is it, to use a little 
girl’s expression, the “really real” world? The ques- 
tion has occasioned endless debate and over it great 
systems: of philosophy are divided. No doubt the 
world of matter has reality of a certain kind. We can 
touch, handle, weigh, and measure it. It impresses 
all the senses. It is the earliest reality with which 
we are familiar, and from the beginning invites our 


18 The Biblical Idea of God 


interest and awakens our energies. But later on in 
life, when our reflective powers are developed, we be- 
come acquainted with that other and higher world, 
the inner one of mind or spirit. You cannot touch 
or handle, weigh or measure that. It is known not 
mediately through bodily impressions but immediately 
in the consciousness of self. Here, then, if anywhere, 
is, as has been already said, fundamental reality. For 
to us the reality of what we call matter depends upon 
the reality of mind. Mind or spirit is the primal fact. 
It is not a function of the brain, a mysterious move- 
ment of highly organized nerve-matter. It transcends 
this and, as Divine Spirit, is the underlying cause of 
all forms of physical organization, from the minutest 
grain of dust to the vastest and remotest system which 
moves and shines in splendor upon the confines of 
the world. Indeed, all these, when analyzed in the 
laboratory of thought, are found to be suffused with 
mind. All law, all order are but the expression of 
mind. In its ultimate form the universe, as the pro- 
foundest philosophy has always taught, is a “spiritual 
system.” If this be true, then he who formed it and 
whose presence it reveals, must be spiritual in nature. 
This throughout is the teaching of the Bible. All re- 
ligions also have held, however dimly and imperfectly, 
this view. The African savage worshipping his fetich, 
worships not the low material object, but the supposed 
indwelling spirit. And the Greeks, who built splendid 
altars before the shrine of Zeus, and carved with high- 
est art the marble images of their gods, bowed not to 


These Conceptions Most Effectively Presented 19 


the outer and visible forms, however noble in design 
and beautiful in execution, but to the personal, that is 
the spiritual, beings whom they represented. 

We have now stated certain general and essential 
elements in the teaching of the Bible concerning God. 
They are not all that we shall find, nor are they the 
most important and distinctive. With the exception 
of its strict and lofty monotheism, they do not, as we 
have seen, belong exclusively to the Bible. But they 
are throughout presented by it in a far more impressive 
and effective way than in any philosophy or religion 
that the world has known. In the Old Testament 
period the religion had its outward expression. ‘There 
was a temple and altars and sacrifices and an elaborate 
ritual. But the emphasis was not even then on these. 
In the most sacred place, the Holy of Holies, no image 
of the unseen deity was found, as in other temples, 
but rather a moral and religious law, expressing the 
divine will and nature, and addressed to the heart and 
conscience of mankind, lifting the adoring spirit above 
the objects and splendors of the material world. 

Let me remind you once more that at present I raise 
no objection, nor attempt any answer concerning the 
authorship of the various books of the Bible, nor when 
they were written, nor whether any of them are essen- 
tially historical, or altogether or in part fiction. Such 
questions may be referred to as we proceed; but how- 
ever it may have come to be, and however we may 
regard it, the Bible is a fact, just as the works of Plato 
are a fact, and as such we should investigate it, with- 


20 The Biblical Idea of God 


out those presuppositions which antecedently determine 
our conclusion. If the conclusion lies already in the 
premises, investigation is useless and a waste of time. 
But this plain and simple truth is not always recog- 
nized. Thus the Bible clearly claims to be a self- 
revelation of God. But by many at the outset, with- 
out testing this claim by investigation, it is assumed 
that the claim is false. Thus Kuenen, in his “Religion 
of Israel,” in the first chapter, claims that this religion 
is a purely natural, human product, one merely of the 
religions of the world, “nothing less, but also nothing 
more.” The Bible, however, as a fact, must declare 
its own nature. By this I do not mean merely the 
claims in words of its human authors, although these 
should not be ignored, and in connection with other 
things may be of weight and value. But just as some 
noble cathedral, with lofty roof and pillared aisle, tells 
its own story, that it was built by some devout and 
greatly gifted mind for religious uses, so the Bible should 
be allowed to tell its story by its structure, by its char- 
acter, by its teaching concerning man and God, and 
by its power to lift the soul of man to the highest 
realms of righteousness, of joy, and of peace. 

We find the books of the Bible arranged in a certain 
order. This order is not always that of their composi- 
tion. In the New Testament the greater number of 
Paul’s epistles were written before the gospels were 
composed. This is also true of some or most of the 
books of the Old Testament. The grouping has been 
determined by the nature of their contents. The his- 


Time Order of the Books 21 


torical books precede the Psalms and the prophets; 
and in these the order of composition has not been ob- 
served. There are early and late Psalms. Isaiah, al- 
though his prophecy is placed first in the series, was 
preceded by Amos and Hosea. Jeremiah, who is placed 
next to Isaiah, did not prophesy until the closing years 
and downfall of the southern kingdom. All this is, of 
course, familiar to scholars, but seems to be unknown 
to the majority of Bible readers, or at least disregarded 
in considering its teaching. 

In a broad and general way, however, the time order 
is observed in the arrangement of the books. The Old 
Testament begins with the creation and ends with the 
postexilic prophets; just as the New Testament begins 
with the life of Christ and ends with the Apocalypse, 
which, however you may interpret it, implies the found- 
ing and spread of the church, and at the same time has 
a forward look into the church’s future. 

We shall conduct our investigation, therefore, in ac- 
cordance with the order of persons and events as the 
Bible itself presents or, rather, indicates them, for it is 
from the Bible itself we learn that the order within the 
main groups is not the order of time. Thus we will 
study, in the first place, the Biblical idea of God as pre- 
sented in the primitive and patriarchal periods. Gen- 
esis, or the book of origins, gives us in the first eleven 
chapters the account of the primitive period. Then 
follow the times of the patriarchs, the call and wander- 
ings of Abraham, the lives of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. 
Then came about four hundred years of silence, broken 


22 The Biblical Idea of God 


by the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and 
Deuteronomy, which contain an account of the bitter 
Egyptian bondage, and of the birth and leadership and 
legislation of Moses. 'To these we should add the book 
of Joshua, which completes the account of the entire 
period from the leaving Egypt to the conquest and set- 
tlement of the promised land. Then we will consider 
the conception of God found in the book of Judges, 
which tells the story of the years between the death of 
Joshua and the work of Samuel, the last of that nota- 
ble series of divinely commissioned rulers of Israel, who 
kept alive the national and patriotic spirit, and again 
and again rescued the people from an oppression 
brought upon them because they forsook the worship 
of Jehovah and followed other gods. This period, 
though much longer in time, is in some respects like 
those few years which have been called the critical 
period of American history. With a unity constituted 
only by race, by language, and by religion, the people 
come by their experiences to feel the need of a more 
visible and tangible unity centring in the person of a 
king. Hence their demand for a monarchy which, al- 
though at first opposed, was yielded to by Samuel. 
This change of government brings us to the times of 
the psalmists and prophets, during which there was an 
impressive and rich development of the idea of God, 
nobly expressed in the personal experiences of Israel's 
religious poets and in the messages of warning and 
condemnation, and also of consolation and hope, of her 
inspired seers. It was doubtless late in this period, 


Tume Order of the Books 23 


perhaps some time after the downfall of the northern 
kingdom, that the book of Job was written, the great- 
est book in the literature of the Old Testament, and 
some would claim in the literature of the world. Then 
come the exilic and postexilic prophets, and after these 
perhaps the book of Ecclesiastes, which records the ex- 
periences of one who sought a satisfactory end in life 
and found none except in the fear of God and the keep- 
ing of his commandments, “for this is the whole duty 
of man” (Eccles. 12:13). Then follows a period of 
which no canonical book gives an account, but which 
is made known to some extent by the Apocrypha. 

We turn then to the New Testament, to the teaching 
of our Lord and his apostles, in which the Scriptural 
conception of God reaches its complete development 
and expression. Beyond this nothing has been or can 
be added. Whatever statements the church has made 
have only been attempts to formulate and emphasize 
the facts and truths of Scripture. If the great historic 
creeds contain additions or modifications or merely 
philosophic explanations of the Biblical facts and 
truths, they are not to be accepted as authoritative, 
constraining belief, but as merely human documents. 
Neither pope nor cardinals, neither synods nor assem- 
blies have the right to impose their thought and will. 
upon the-faith of the Christian church. The Bible, 
which is addressed to the common understanding and 
is a self-interpretative book, is the sole and supreme 
authority. If this were the accepted rule, the unhappy 
divisions and antagonisms which characterize Chris- 


24 The Biblical Idea of God 


tianity to-day would never have existed. The unity of 
the church would have remained unbroken, centring in 
a common faith in a common Lord. 

We have thus before us a long course of historic de- 
velopment, the germs of which lie in a far-distant past, 
a course full of remarkable events and great personali- 
ties, whose character and influence have determined 
the direction which the progressive religious life of man 
has taken. The central and determining idea of this 
historic development has been the conception of God 
revealed in the Bible. All religions, indeed, are con- 
stituted, are differentiated and distinguished, by the 
idea of the divine nature and character. So, also, are 
all philosophies and theologies and creeds. From the 
lowest fetichism up to the thought of Plato and the 
teaching of our Lord this idea is central and elemental. 
Always and everywhere man has been haunted and 
constrained in action and belief by the thought of God. 
He cannot escape it. His rational and moral nature 
compels him to form some conception, however remote 
from or near the essential truth. He has not reasoned 
himself into it. It is, in its last analysis, an intuition, 
an elemental consciousness of another self, standing 
over against his own finite self, who is to be propitiated, 
worshipped, obeyed. Therefore atheists are few, and 
are the results of perverted reasoning, obscuring this 
deeper conviction native to the soul. Wherever the 
thought of God which is found in the Bible is made 
clearly known, and in the concrete forms the Bible 
uses, there the forces of unbelief give way. 


Modern Criticism 25 


We live in times of minute and highly developed 
scholarship. Nature, man, the Bible are subjected to 
microscopic and extended investigation. There are in- 
tense conflicts, as there ever have been, and many the- 
ories once held as truths are being flung upon the 
scrap-heap. As regards the Bible, the sphere and aims 
of investigation are materially changed. Much of the 
scholarship is critical, not constructive. It looks upon 
the Bible largely, if not exclusively, as merely the lit- 
erature of the Hebrew people. It is not so much the 
contents as the form and structure, the sources and put- 
ting together of the various books, that are being inves- 
tigated. Once it was what the Bible taught concern- 
ing God and man, their nature and relation to each 
other, and the duty and destiny of man that was 
sought for in its pages, and out of this teaching the 
great ecumenical creeds were formed. But now the 
questions are: Who wrote Genesis, and when and how 
was it written? Who wrote Isaiah? How many 
Isaiahs were there? How many strands have been 
wrought into the Bible narratives, and what are their 
distinctive characteristics, and from what part of the 
Hebrew people did they come? How many redactors, 
or editors, have there been, and how much did these 
add or take away? How much is fact, and how much 
is fiction, and how can fact and fiction be distinguished 
and untwined from this many-colored and twisted and 
even tangled thread of narrative? I do not deny that 
such questions are interesting and indeed important, 
in so far as they affect our belief in the truthfulness of 


26 The Biblical Idea of God 


the records of the Bible and of its claim to be a revela- 
tion of the living God. But relatively they are super- 
ficial, in so far as they do not concern the solid and 
essential contents of this great book. Let scholars de- 
cide them as they may, I am confident that no de- 
cision will or can destroy the faith of the, Christian 
church in the essential truth of the Bible and in its 
divine origin and inspiration. This faith has endured 
the trying test of centuries and the assaults of much 
scholarly unbelief; and, although not a few may fear 
that at last modern scholarship has given it a mortal 
blow, let us be assured that the scholars who defend it 
are as numerous and as well equipped and thorough- 
going as those who would destroy it. 

Yet such devout and conservative scholars seem not 
so well known to the general public as are those whose 
work is destructive. For to destroy is ever more at- 
tractive than to build up. War, with its wide-spread 
desolations, its fearful passions, its awful waste of hu- 
man life, its agonies and woe, awakens an intenser in- 
terest than the silent forces of peace which create our 
nobler civilizations and make nations really great. The 
time will come, however, predicted long centuries ago 
by Isaiah, Israel’s greatest prophet—nay, we can al- 
ready see the faintly gleaming light of its gracious 
dawn—when all constructive agencies will have a 
deeper interest, a more effective power, and it is to the 
Bible that we shall owe this profound change in the 
minds of men. Especially shall we owe it to that 
manifestation of the divine character which is found in 


Modern Criticism 27 


the Bible alone and which reached its culmination in 
Him at whose birth the angelic choirs sang: 


“Glory to God in the highest, 
And on earth peace among men 
in whom he is well pleased.” 
(Luke 2: 14.) 


Hence, the present-day destructive criticism of the 
Bible, although so prevalent, so subtle, so apparently 
scientific in method, so microscopic in investigation, so 
learned, so imposing in the authority of great names, 
so attractive, so seemingly successful in securing its re- 
sults, so often arrogant in its claims, is destined, in so 
far as it rests on grounds subversive of Christian faith, 
to pass into that oblivion where lie already so many 
vaunted views, which were in conflict not merely with 
the Bible, but with man’s essentially religious nature 
and his deepest moral needs. 

But not only are questions of authorship, and date, 
and intermingled narrative of fact and fiction, and the 
various sources from which these came those that to- 
day Biblical criticism mainly considers, but there is a 
distinctive spirit with which it carries on its investiga- 
tions that we should not fail to notice. While not 
true of all, it is true of far too many that the Bible is 
approached and treated with that cold and merely in- 
tellectual interest with which the physician dissects a 
corpus vile. But when the knife has done its work and 
instead of a symmetrical form there remain only sep- 
arate masses of related fragments, these neither consti- 


28 The Biblical Idea of God 


tute nor explain man. For man is “a living soul,” and 
it is not in the laboratory, with its merely analytic 
spirit and quest, that you shall find him, but rather in 
the shop, in the mart, in the thronged street; out in 
the broad fields beneath the bending skies; in national 
organizations; in society and in the home; in his liter- 
atures and arts; in all forms that express his thought 
and aspiration, his faith and hope, his sorrow and his 
joy, his religious beliefs and his moral codes. Here and 
not elsewhere you shall find man, and here he can be 
known only with that spirit which is not coldly critical 
but warm with sympathy and love. These profound 
emotions, out of which high aims are born and which 
give nobility and color to human life, are the essential 
conditions which enable us to understand and appre- 
ciate the careers of such men as Abraham and David, 
Moses and Isaiah, John and Paul. Physical science re- 
quires the discerning and calculating intellect alone, 
but the science of man, the science which would attain 
to a knowledge of his moral and religious nature and of 
the God whom the Bible reveals, while requiring no 
less of intellectual power and apprehension, requires 
much more the deeper perceptions of the heart if we 
are to reach its essential principles and comprehend its 
distinctive truths. These principles and truths are 
neither found in such completeness nor expressed with 
such transforming power in any other book, and they 
have their centre and their personal expression in its 
conception of the living God. In this lies its influence 
in the lives of countless numbers of individual men and 


Expressed in a Gospel 29 


in the changing character of the historic development 
of the modern world. The moral maxims of Confu- 
cius, the character and philosophic teaching of Gau- 
tama Buddha, the claims and religion of Mohammed, 
have indeed determined the character and controlled 
the actions of unnumbered millions of our race, but no 
other book, no other moral code, no other religion has 
so appealed to and awakened what is noblest in man, 
has so aroused his distinctive nature and lifted him to 
such high planes of duty and devotion as has the Bible. 
For in its essential nature it 1s not a philosophy nor a 
law, but a gospel, a glad tidings concerning God, de- 
claring his gracious attitude toward this lost and sin- 
ning world and setting forth in historic terms what he 
himself has done for its redemption. 

Thus, when Paul in his epistle to the Romans defines 
this gospel it is by the word power. The gospel is not 
merely a moral message, a statement of the highest 
standard of human duty, but, to use his own form of 
words, it is “the power of God unto salvation to 
every one that believeth” (Romans 1:16). According 
to this statement, the source of this power is God, its 
end is salvation, its condition is faith. The form which 
this divine power takes is a word—the word of God, 
that is, the Biblical idea of God expressed in spiritual, 
concrete, personal terms, culminating in one supreme 
personality, the Lord Jesus Christ, who according to 
the Apostle John was the Eternal Word, both human 
and divine, both living and life-giving, whose nature 
and work the profoundest minds cannot exhaust, and 


30 The Biblical Idea of God 


yet whose love and sympathy the simplest can under- 
stand. 

If our study shall lead to the clearer unfolding and 
more comprehensive grasp of this historic Word, if it 
shall bring to us a broader view of the divine charac- 
ter, and a deeper faith in its self-revelation, it will not 
be in vain. For what man most needs is to have a 
clearer understanding and a more abiding conviction . 
of the truth of the Biblical idea of God. 


II 
THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 


IN THE PRIMITIVE AND PATRIARCHAL PERIODS, AS 
SET FORTH IN GENESIS 


In the first lecture we have dealt with certain gen- 
eral conceptions, viz., that the Biblical idea of God is 
concrete in its presentation, personal, moral, spiritual, 
monotheistic, which conceptions are to be considered 
more at length and confirmed by the detailed investi- 
gation which is to follow. We are now to study this 
idea as it is presented in the book of Genesis. This 
gives an account of the primitive and patriarchal peri- 
ods ending with the descent of Jacob and his family 
into Egypt and the death of Joseph. 

The primitive period opens with the account of crea- 
tion and ends with the genealogical record leading up 
to the call of Abraham. This account of creation has 
long been a subject of controversy. Certain natural 
sciences have been arrayed against it. Astronomy, 
geology, anthropology, ethnology, it is claimed, tell a 
different story. Some of these conflicts have either 
passed away, or only their lingering echoes are still 
heard. At present the leading controversy seems to 
be concerning the literary character and historical ori- 
gin of this account. Who wrote it? When and where 
and for what purpose was it written? Is it myth, or 


legend, or a strictly accurate description of how the 
31 


32 The Bablical Idea of God 


heavens and earth, the animals and man came to be? 
Did Moses write it, or is it an account by some late 
writer living in Babylonia, and therefore determined 
and colored by the religious conceptions of that coun- 
try and age? Are there two accounts of creation, the 
first ending with the third verse of the second chapter, 
and indicated and distinguished by the names of God 
used in each, as well as by other criteria; and do these 
two accounts agree or disagree? These are the ques- 
tions raised by the literary and historical criticism of 
to-day. The opposing views may be characterized in 
general as the radical and conservative. In their ex- 
treme forms the one denies altogether any truth in the 
creation story, the other accepts it in the most literal 
sense. But such sharp antagonisms often lose sight 
of important truths which may be discerned and held 
without adopting either extreme. That the Bible ac- 
count of the origin of the world contains such truths 
cannot well be denied; and it is not with the source and 
outward form of the narrative that we are here espe- 
cially concerned, but with its essential contents. What 
does it teach concerning God? That is the main and 
most important question, a question too often disre- 
garded in controversies concerning days, and the order 
of succession of various existences, and the length of 
time since man appeared upon the earth. As a witty 
and eloquent minister of the gospel once put it: “The 
garden of the Lord has often obscured the Lord of the 
garden.” 

We take the Bible as we find it, without prejudg- 


In the Primitive Period 33 


ment, whether critical or traditional, and in reading 
the account of creation inquire, first of all, what was 
evidently the leading aim of its human author? Was 
it scientific or religious? Was it to describe how the 
world was made or was it to fix attention on the Maker? 
In other words, was God the principal subject, or was 
the description of the various and successive steps in 
the creative process the principal subject? That it was 
not the latter seems to be clearly evident from the brief 
and comprehensive statements which make up the 
account. 

The natural sciences deal in precise and definite de- 
tails. 'They seek each link in the chain of physical 
causation. These causes are also effects of antecedent 
causes, and their quest ends where that of religion be- 
gins. For religion seeks and affirms the one infinite, 
universal, and personal cause of all that has come to 
be. It concerns itself with God and regards his works 
not by themselves alone, to be explored and explained 
by a strictly scientific method and principles, but as 
disclosing him. Here psalmist and prophet are better 
teachers than those who work in laboratories built for 
physical research. 

That the account of creation, while religious in char- 
acter, is not opposed to the observations and just con- 
clusions of the natural sciences, is held by scholars who 
are familiar with both natural science and the Bible. 
A purely scientific account anticipating by thousands 
of years not only the facts disclosed by modern re- 
search, but also the form and method in which these are 


34 The Biblical Idea of God 


presented, would have been beyond the comprehension 
of the men of the age in which the account was writ- 
ten. As it is, however, it fits any age; the simplest 
minds can grasp its essential truth, and men of great 
scientific attainments have been impressed by its 
beauty and power, as of a noble poem, whose theme is 
the origin of the world. In its main outline it is in 
agreement with the story science tells. There was 
first a formless state of matter, “the earth was waste 
and void’’—words which well express the condition of 
fire-mist out of which the vast systems of sun and star 
are said to have been evolved. Then in orderly suc- 
cession came light, and the firmament, or expanse of 
heaven, the separation of land and water, the appear- 
ance of vegetation, of the sun and moon and stars, of 
fish and fowl, and, last of all, of the higher animals and 
man. Here, then, is a gradual and progressive devel- 
opment from formless and inanimate matter up to 
living and rational existence, the bright consummate 
flower of all. 

The only apparent conflict with the conclusions of 
natural science is the appearance on the fourth day of 
the sun and moon and stars, which such science teaches 
preceded the existence of the earth and its inhabitants. 
But, however we may attempt to resolve this conflict, 
and such attempts are made, however conclusive or in- 
conclusive they may be, the fact remains that in the 
large outline there is agreement. But even if in cer- 
tain portions of the two accounts, the Biblical and the 
scientific, there is want of harmony, it is a grave mis- 


In the Primitive Period 35 


take to rest on this the essential truth of the Biblical 
account. For the essential truth concerns God, his na- 
ture and character, and his relationship to the world. 
To the natural sciences the main subject is the crea- 
tion ; but to the religion of the Bible the main subject 
is the Creator. The emphasis is upon who made the 
world, not upon how it was made. This has been too 
often disregarded by both friend and foe of the Bible. 
But the word God stands out in the account as if it 
were written in largest letters of living light. It occurs 
no less than thirty-five times in the thirty-four verses 
contained in the account, and each time it is the sub- 
ject of a verb expressing some particular action. God 
created, God said, God saw, God divided, God called, 
God made, God set in the firmament, God blessed, 
God finished his work and rested: these are the terms 
used constantly throughout this brief account. They 
fix attention on him more especially than on his work; 
and the monotheism, which is clearly evident and 
denied by none, is in striking and decisive contrast 
with the prevailing polytheism of the ancient world. 
It has been thought by some that the main purpose 
of the author was to teach and emphasize the mono- 
theistic view. In the opening words of his brief yet sub- 
lime statement he says that in the beginning God al- 
ready is, saying it by implication as if it were undoubted 
truth, and that all other existences came into being 
through his creative power. But in the Babylonian 
mythology the gods are begotten of chaos and dark 
night. They do not have eternal being. This mono- 


36 The Biblical Idea of God 


theism, even if the account were written as late as the 
Babylonian captivity, is most remarkable, however you 
may account for it. That among the babel of many 
voices uttering praises in many temples to many finite 
gods there should be heard one clear voice affirming 
the one infinite and ever-living God, would seem to be 
alone rightly explained by the self-revelation of that 
supreme God to which the Bible ascribes it. 

Moreover, in considering the narrative of creation, it 
should be noted that there is no attempt to describe 
the method by which God works. Such words as cre- 
ated, made, said are left unexplained. The process is 
undefined. We are not told whether creation was in- 
stantaneous or prolonged. There must have been an 
instant when things began, but subsequent to that the 
account describes six days of work, whether ordinary 
days of twenty-four hours each is meant by the author, 
or long periods of time, is a matter of conjecture; and 
whether there is continuous genetic evolution or a 
series of distinct creations is a question concerning 
which even conservative scholars are not agreed. It is 
a fact, however, that men have read into this account 
their own meanings, and it is mainly over these that 
controversies have arisen. Thus, as regards the crea- 
tion of man it seems to have been assumed (and this 
apparently has been held to be the orthodox interpre- 
tation) that invisible hands fashioned an image from 
the clay, and that invisible lips breathed into it the 
breath of life. But this is to form a mental picture 
which the account does not warrant, a picture taken 


In the Primitive Period 37 


from the sculptor’s workshop. God’s method of work- 
ing, it may rightly be assumed, is not man’s method. 
If we wish to know what that method is, we should go 
to God’s workshop, wherein he is still at work—in all 
life and growth, in tree and flower, in beast and bird, 
in ocean and stream, in sun and star. Hence, while 
the Bible teaches that he is the originator and maker, 
the student of nature, whether devout or undevout, 
whether believer in the Bible or unbeliever, is yet by 
sincere and patient investigation of the forms and forces 
of the world, by discovery of past and present facts and 
of the dominating and guiding laws which these facts 
disclose, showing us how God has worked and still is 
working in the creation and sustaining of the world 
and man. Therefore the investigations of the student 
of the Bible and of the student of nature should not 
lead to conflicting results. They are on different 
planes, and hence seek different ends and different an- 
swers to their quest. The one teaches who originated 
the world and man, with only large and comprehensive 
outline of the method; the other endeavors to tell us 
how with precise and minute statement of the various 
steps in the age-long process. 

Seeking thus to clear the field of all unnecessary con- 
troversy and holding that truth in one sphere cannot 
be in conflict with truth in another, let us inquire what 
is the idea of God which evidently appears in the earli- 
est chapters of Genesis. It is, as we have said, the 
-monotheistic idea. The world and man owe their ori- 
gin to one God and one only. This conception is fun- 


38 The Biblical Idea of God 


damental in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and 
among all the religions of the world is found in them 
alone. Mohammedanism, it is true, is monotheistic, 
but Mohammed, no doubt, derived his view from the 
Hebrew and Christian faith, which in his time was 
known in Arabia. Account for this pure monotheism 
of the Bible how you.may, make it the result of a long 
development from some lower and debased conception, 
the earliest form of which is lost in the obscurity of pre- 
historic time, or conceive of it as the primitive form of 
religious belief, yet the fact remains that it is the dis- 
tinctive teaching of the Bible and appears in its earli- 
est records. 

Thus the Bible begins where the speculations of 
philosophy and science end. These cannot rest in the 
multiplicity of things, but seek a common ground of 
which all forms and forces are the manifold expression, 
not a few conceiving of it as impersonal in its nature. 
But the Biblical idea in its initial statement being 
purely monotheistic is also purely personal. God is rep- 
resented not merely as the sum of being nor as the in- 
finite and universal energy, without self-consciousness, 
and working from interior necessity, but as intelligent 
and volitional. Creation is the exercise of his will and 
is wrought according to a plan. Heaven and earth are 
the eternal thought of God expressed in forms of space 
and time and linked chain of cause and effect, and are 
accomplishing his purpose. 

This monotheistic and therefore personal idea of 
God is also demanded by the profoundest thought and 


In the Primitive Period 39 


insistent needs of the human soul. The greatest think- 
ers and teachers, even those without the range of the 
Bible’s influence, such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, 
have nearly approached it, although not quite attain- 
ing to the full and pure conception of the Bible. You 
may call it anthropomorphic, if you will, that is, think- 
ing of God after the form of the inner nature of man, 
or, in other words, deriving the conception of the divine 
nature from man’s consciousness of his own rational 
nature; and because thus derived you may reject it. 
But on this ground you could reject all kinds of knowl- 
edge; for man constructs his idea of the material world 
not merely from impressions made on the senses, but 
from elemental and necessary forms of thought which 
his own rational nature gives. As Browning finely 
states in his “Paracelsus’’:. 


“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise 
From outward things, whatever you may believe: 
There is an inmost centre in us all, 

Where truth abides in fullness; and around, 
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, 
This perfect clear perception—which is truth. 
... to know 

Rather consists in opening out a way 
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 
Than in effecting entrance for a light 
Supposed to be without.” 

(‘‘Paracelsus,” page 27.) 


The conceptions of being, force, cause, time, space, 
—as has been shown by the clearest thinkers, by those 


40 The Biblical Idea of God 


who have most deeply explored and made known the 
workings of the human mind—are not given to us 
from without, but arise from within. Since outward 
experience is not their source but only the occasion and 
condition which draws them forth, it acts upon the 
mind as the developing fluid acts upon the sensitive 
photographic plate» The image is there, but this is 
needed to bring it into view. Natural science were im- 
possible, then, without those preconceptions, those nec- 
essary and universal ideas, those primal truths, 


“Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing,’ 


which give form and coherence to what the eye per- 
ceives, the ear hears, the touch discerns, of the mani- 
fold objects of the outer world. Natural science, there- 
fore, as science, that is, as ordered knowledge, is in this 
sense anthropomorphic. Its world is constructed and 
conceived in accordance with the thought forms which 
the human mind itself supplies. But these give us, or 
constitute, the ground on which rests our conviction 
of its truths. Without these elemental and necessary 
forms of thought our world would be one not of law, 
but of confusion, and all ordered knowledge would be 
impossible. 

The doctrine of evolution shows that personality is 
the highest form of being. The long, progressive proc- 
ess of genetic development, from the primal fire-mist, 


In the Primitive Period 4] 


as some teach, up to now, has issued in a rational moral 
being, 
“Man, the consummation of this scheme 
Of being, the completion of this sphere 
Of life.” 
(‘‘Paracelsus,”’ page 145.) 


Beyond him, so far as regards this earth, there is 
no indication of a further advance. Any.finite being 
of a different and higher kind it seems impossible to 
conceive. Indeed, much of philosophical speculation 
makes no attempt to conceive of a different and higher 
form, but at this point reverses the evolutionary proc- 
ess and turns back the line of descent toward the origi- 
nal fire-mist whence it started, thus conceiving the 
universe to be an immense self-moving clock which 
throughout eternal hours winds itself up and then un- 
winds itself, this upward and downward movement go- 
ing on successively forever. 

But leaving such subtle speculations to the philoso- 
phers, the evident fact is that the Bible assumes per- 
sonality to be the highest form of being, ascribing it to 
God as well as man. It should be noted, however, that 
while, in the account of creation, intelligence and crea- 
tive power, working toward a preconceived end, are 
ascribed to God, there is no direct ascription to him of 
a moral nature except as it 1s implied in the statement 
that man was made in the image of God; for this state- 
ment cannot refer to anything but man’s spiritual na- 
ture. For while the material world is one of law there 
is in it no moral law. For moral law implies volition 


42 The Biblical Idea of God 


and freedom. Unless man can determine himself and — 
his actions with reference to ideal moral ends he is not 
in the full sense a person; he is a thing, and the law of 
things is the law of necessity. Here force, not will, 
works unconscious of its ends, unless you conceive of 
force as the unchanging expression of the Divine will. 
The student of nature must begin with the moral 
world, and from that go to the physical, or he will gain 
no knowledge of the meaning of that imperative word 
ought. He will only be impressed by a sense of must. 
It is not strange, therefore, that so many of our nat- 
uralists are necessitarians. Their thoughts are sub- 
dued and colored by the material in which they work. 
Personality, indeed, in its complete sense implies a 
moral nature, but, as I have said, this does not imme- 
diately appear in the account of creation. It is not 
until the second chapter of Genesis, and throughout 
those that follow, that the moral nature of God is dis- 
tinctly expressed. In these man as a rational and 
moral creature, the height and goal of the whole crea- 
tion, becomes the leading subject. He is placed in the 
edenic garden, to till its soil and enjoy its fruits, but he 
is under a command. There is a prohibition. The 
fruit of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” 
he is not to eat. Good and evil are to be understood 
as moral good and evil, not physical. This prohibition 
is sanctioned by a penalty, that of death. But tempta- 
tion comes, disobedience follows, the awful sense of 
sin and guilt is awakened, fear of the divine presence 
ensues, and man hides himself in the depths of the 


In the Primitive Period 43 


garden. But the divine voice is heard announcing the 
infliction of the penalty; man has lost his childlike in- 
nocence and dies morally; and the forces which result 
in physical death begin their inevitable work. He is 
cast out of the garden, where happiness and’ peace 
dwelt, and becomes subject henceforth to toil, to suffer- 
ing, to woe, and to the abiding sense of estrangement 
between himself and God. Then there is the account 
of the birth of children, of the beginning of envy, of 
hatred, and of a brother’s murder, of the curse upon 
the murderer, of his fear and flight into the desolate 
land of wandering. 

How vivid, how dramatic, how true is this account 
to the working of the conscience oppressed by the ago- 
nizing sense of sin! It is a tragedy which no dramatist 
has ever equalled. All the essential elements of trans- 
gression, of terror, and of woe are here. The stage is 
the world with heaven and hell in the dark background 
and the actors are mankind. Whether you interpret 
it as literal history, or myth, or legend, or as a pictorial 
presentation of man’s passing from a state of mere in- 
nocence to one of moral apprehension, you must ac- 
knowledge that it expresses in historic form the inner 
state of the human soul when it is conscious of having 
chosen moral evil instead of moral good. The facts of 
life confirm it in every point, for every man in his in- 
dividual experience passes from the edenic state of 
childhood to the bitter consciousness of sin and guilt 
and shame. 

Throughout all this account of the command, of the 


44 The Brblical Idea of God 


temptation and the fall, there appears in the clearest 
light the moral element in the Biblical idea of a per- 
sonal God. This should be distinctly noted, for this is 
distinctively characteristic of the Bible. For it is not 
the moral attributes of the divine nature that science 
and philosophy dwell upon and illustrate, even when 
there is belief in sucha God. Intelligence, power, omni- 
presence, omniscience, infinite and eternal existence— 
these mainly occupy the thoughts and awaken the awe 
of those who seek to know God merely through nature 
and man. But the Bible addresses itself directly to 
man’s moral and religious nature by its presentation of 
a moral God whose ever-insistent law is moral. Hence 
it awakens a more abiding interest and a deeper awe 
than philosophy and natural science ever can. Paul 
states the character and aim of his ministry to be “not 
walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God 
deceitfully, but by the manifestation of the truth com- 
mending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the 
sight of God” (II Cor. 4:2). This is the profound 
note, struck from the beginning, when man, not the 
earth and its products, becomes the leading object of 
interest in the sacred narrative. 

But man is not left to the destructive agencies and 
consequences which his transgression brought upon 
him. Dark as was the future, a ray of light shone 
upon it, a ray which was to broaden and brighten 
throughout the centuries to come. If there is sin and 
shame there is not the agony of despair. Righteous- 
ness and its penalties exist, but athwart the lowering 


In the Primitive Period on S65 


skies gleams the light of grace. The seed of the woman 
is to bruise the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). This is 
the prot-evangelium, the first prophetic note of the gos- 
pel of redemption. It is faint, indeed, and enigmatical 
in form, but to us its significance is clear. It indicates 
that other attribute of the divine nature which no 
other religion so confidently affirms, the attribute of 
love, which is at last to lead erring man back to right- 
eousness and peace. 

The chapters which follow the account of the trans- 
gression and expulsion from the garden are mainly con- 
cerned with the growth of moral evil, which at last 
reaches a condition described by that impressive state- 
ment, a statement disclosing a profounder and more 
exact psychology than that taught in the schools. 
“And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was 
great and that every imagination of the thoughts of his 
heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). Here the 
imagination, where thoughts take form and vivid pres- 
entation, and the heart, the seat of emotion, the 
sphere and source of all those forces which determine 
and direct volition, are made the centre of man’s moral 
life. This conception of man is held to throughout 
the Bible. He is not merely a part of material nature 
but a spiritual intelligence standing upon and above it. 
Man’s sin and shame is that he has fallen below his real 
self and plane of being, and fixes his desires upon things 
that cannot satisfy, upon the creature rather than the 
Creator. 

Reaching thus a description of man’s moral state we 


t 


46 Lhe Biblical Idea of God 


have an account of the penalty it incurs, the almost 
universal destruction of human life by the waters of 
the flood. Whether this account is history or myth, is 
fact or fiction, whether it is made up of two separate 
and traditional accounts so clumsily pieced together 
that the line of demarcation can easily be traced, or is 
one consistent story, preserved by those who witnessed 
and shared in the events, “the log-book of Noah,” as 
an eminent naturalist and also student of the Bible has 
called it—these, as I have said, are questions beside our 
present purpose. There are not wanting many schol- 
ars of high standing who see no reason for rejecting it 
as a record of what once occurred, accounts of which 
have come down in the traditions of other peoples be- 
sides the Hebrews. But our purpose here is to point 
out and emphasize the fact that the Biblical account of 
the flood is written from a purely moral and religious 
point of view. Other questions, whether relevant or 
irrelevant, should not obscure this fact. We find the 
same pure monotheism, the same personal conception, 
the same essentially moral character of God and his in- 
sistence on the supremacy of moral law, before which 
physical law shrinks into comparative insignificance, 
such as we have found in the accounts preceding it. 
Righteousness is an elemental attribute of the divine 
character, expressed in command and penalty, but no 
less elemental is the attribute of grace. 

Shining across the o’erarching heavens, upon which 
the storm-clouds may still have lingered, was the bow 
of promise. Noah and his family had often seen and 


In the Primitive Period 47 


admired its beauty, for it is the effect of laws which 
have existed from the earth’s beginning. But now it 
received a new significance. It became the symbol 
that never again should such destruction come upon 
the earth. As Noah and his family, therefore, looked 
upon it they could go forth with hope to the repeo- 
pling and reconstruction of a perished world, sus- 
tained by the faith that God is not only just but also 
merciful. 

Here, then, we have presented in these brief eleven 
chapters of primitive history, in unmistakable terms, 
in concrete historic form, in a record of persons and 
events, two essential conceptions in the Biblical idea of 
God. Just as often, in the opening notes of a sym- 
phony there is given in briefest terms the musical 
theme which the measures that follow elaborate in 
various complicated forms, so here righteousness and 
grace, justice and mercy sound clearly and harmoni- 
ously forth, attributes of the divine character which 
seem to some at times in conflict, as they consider 
God’s government of the world, but which emerge at 
last, when revelation is complete, in a final and abid- 
ing harmony in the cross of Jesus Christ. 

We pass on now to consider the patriarchal period, 
which begins with the call of Abraham. Between this 
and the primitive period there is an interval of we 
know not how long a time, for the chronology is un- 
certain. Formerly it was assumed that the genealogi- 
cal records between Adam and Abraham gave immedi- 
ately successive generations. Upon this assumption 


48 The Boblical Idea of God 


Archbishop Usher’s chronology, placed in the margin 
of King James’s version, was founded. But the method 
of the Bible historians seems to be indicated by the 
genealogy of our Lord given in the gospels, which, com- 
pared with the Old Testament, omits a number of gen- 
erations. Archeological discoveries in Egypt and 
Babylonia, also, which disclose a highly developed civ- 
ilization whose origin is lost in the mists of prehistoric 
time, but which, in an advanced state, can apparently 
be traced back to seven or eight thousand years B. C., 
as well as the remains of man and his implements which 
have been dug up in Europe and America, clearly in- 
dicate that there was a much greater lapse of time than 
was once supposed between the advent of man upon 
the earth and the days of Abraham. Hence, the late 
Revised Versions, both English and American, omit 
the chronology of Usher. 

This lapse of time is variously estimated. Some 
make it consist of hundreds of thousands of years. 
But such estimates rest on few and uncertain data, 
and seem to be largely the product of imagination. A 
sane and careful observer, who was an eminent geolo- 
gist, the late Professor Frederick Wright, in his book 
“The Antiquity of Man,” after considering all avail- 
able facts, comes to the conclusion that man appeared 
upon the earth not more than about fifteen thousand 
years ago. When we consider that the advocates of 
a much longer time differ among themselves, in their 
estimates, to the extent of even many hundreds of 
thousands of years, we are less inclined to accept their 


In the Patriarchal Period 49 


statements, resting as they appear so largely to do 
upon unproved assumptions rather than on facts. 

With Abraham begins a clearer and fuller disclosure 
of the nature and character of God. Hitherto the man- 
ifestations have been less defined and more infrequent. 
The primitive period was the early dawn of God’s 
self-revelation. A few stars shone here and there. A 
few rays were brightening with promise on the east- 
ern horizon. But now the light grows stronger and 
gives greater assurance of the splendor of the coming 
day. 

Abraham is a believer in the one supreme God, El- 
Elyon, “God most high, possessor of heaven and 
earth,” to use his own expressive words. He has been 
called the first great monotheist, standing large and 
distinct against the background of ancient history. 
But this is doubtful. The Biblical account does not 
sustain it. Noah is represented as a worshipper of one 
God. It is true, however, according to Joshua in his 
final charge to the children of Israel (Joshua 24: 2), 
that the ancestors of Abraham, including even Terah, 
his father, were polytheists, serving other gods than 
Jehovah. It is a fair conclusion, therefore, that Abra- 
ham was brought up in this belief and worshipped his 
father’s gods. We may picture him, then, in his early 
life, offering his prayers and sacrifices at the altars and 
contemplating with religious awe the temples of the 
city sacred to the Moon-God, whose remains still lie 
beside the Euphrates River. But when he left Ur of 
the Chaldees on his long migrations he was seventy-five 


50 The Biblical Idea of God 


years old and evidently was then a worshipper of Jeho- 
vah. How or when the great change in his belief took 
place we are not told. That there was an earlier mon- 
otheism, taught in the religious schools of Babylonia, 
from which the polytheism prevalent in the time of 
Abraham was a falling away and degradation, is held 
by some. If this be true, then there were not wanting 
external influences in his time which may help to ac- 
count for his monotheistic belief. But according to 
the Bible history such influences alone were insufficient. 
It distinctly teaches that the faith of Abraham was 
the result of God’s self-revelation. He was the sub- 
ject of an immediate divine call. This call involved 
two essential elements; it was a command and also a 
promise. The command was to leave his early home 
and journey to a land to which he would be divinely 
led. The promise was threefold, viz.: that he, although 
at that time childless, should have descendants as in- 
numerable as the sands of the sea and the stars of the 
midnight sky; that they should possess the land to 
which he was led; and, most significant of all, that in 
him and his seed should all the families of the earth be 
blessed. Just what form that blessing should take is 
not stated. It is undefined. Its full and precise sig- 
nificance was to be gradually revealed throughout suc- 
ceeding centuries of historic events and by prophetic 
messengers divinely sent. 

In full or in part this promise is given to Abraham 
seven times in the brief record of his life. Beginning 
with his call it is repeated at every distinct epoch of his 


In the Patriarchal Period 5I 


career: when he reached Canaan; after his separation 
from Lot; after his defeat of the Eastern kings; when 
the covenant of circumcision was established; just be- 
fore the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; and at 
the offering of Isaac. To it also Abraham refers when 
he sends his servant to obtain a wife for Isaac. All 
this indicates how prominent the divine promise was 
in the mind and life of the great patriarch. It explains 
his career, it determines his character; it becomes the 
supreme and guiding object of his faith. It is the 
golden key which unlocks the mysteries of the historic 
Revelation. Fling it away, or bury it beneath the re- 
sults of a rationalistic and radical criticism, and you 
cannot understand God’s dealings not only with the 
Hebrew people but with the peoples of the world. Ex- 
cept for the promise made to Abraham, Old Testament 
and New would in essential meaning be unrelated 
books. The Old closes with announcement of its ful- 
filment in the sending of the personal Messiah (see 
Mal. 3:1; 4:5). The New opens, after long years of 
silence, with references to the promise of his coming 
(see Luke 1:17, 55, 70, 73, 76). Mary, the mother of 
our Lord, ends her song of praise with celebrating the 
“mercy (as he spake unto our fathers) toward Abra- 
ham and his seed for ever” and Zacharias, in his words 
of blessing, announces the mission of his son, John the 
Baptist, as the fulfilment of what the prophets of Israel 
taught, and of the oath sworn to Abraham. Our Lord, 
also, in his teaching links himself and his work again 
and again with this prophetic past of promise, and the 


52 The Biblical Idea of God 


Apostle Paul builds upon it his great argument for a 
justifying faith. 

Thus the entire Bible is but the announcement and 
fulfilment of God’s purpose and promise of world re- 
demption. By this the Biblical idea of his nature and 
character is determined and expressed. Grace and 
mercy, which is grace in exercise, are its essential ele- 
ments. ‘T'o those who do not apprehend this the Bible 
is a sealed and strange book. To them the persons 
and events, which stand out so vividly and in such 
lifelike form on its pages, will have no vital relation- 
ship to one another. They will be like the planets of 
the midnight sky, whose mysterious motions no astron- 
omer completely understood, nor could understand, 
until Copernicus pointed to the sun as the central and 
controlling orb. Then every planet was seen to move 
in its proper cycle, and the solar system was compre- 
hended as a harmonious whole. So it is with the 
promise of a moral redemption. It shines as central 
and controlling in the Bible’s system of Revelation, 
and discloses the essential significance of the Biblical 
idea of God. 

Let us pause now for a moment and try to realize 
how wonderful is this experience which came to Abra- 
ham, and how great is the conception of God which it 
discloses. Once he seemed, and may still seem to 
many, an almost solitary figure, wandering over plain 
and mountain with flocks and herds, with no historic 
background except what the Biblical record suggested 
or supplied. But now, how marvellously the scene has 


In the Patriarchal Period 53 


changed! The unromantic spade has dug up for us a 
great historic past. The Bible canvas has been filled 
in with persons and events, with nations and civiliza- 
tions, with royal dynasties and the rise and fall of 
empires, with racial movements, with codes of law and 
religious systems, whose records were long buried be- 
neath the mounds of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia. 
The times of Abraham are now, it is claimed, as well 
known as the times of Pericles in Greece. We not 
only can trace his wandering steps upon the map, but 
have become familiar with persons and events con- 
temporary with and long preceding him. The location 
of his native city, Ur, is now definitely determined; at 
least, many archeologists so believe. He is thus no 
longer an almost solitary figure, standing out against 
an obscure Eastern sky and mingling with petty peo- 
ples of whom little was known. But if his large his- 
toric environment has become more clearly manifest 
by means of explorations in far Eastern lands, still our 
knowledge of his person and career, of his character 
and religious faith, of his conception of the only true 
God which lay at the basis of his belief, is altogether 
dependent on the Bible; and while its record is com- 
paratively brief, giving only a few leading events, a 
few leading statements which show the nature of his 
belief, yet they are of the highest significance, and jus- 
tify the lofty place he holds in the sacred narrative, 
both Old Testament and New. Yet the contrast be- 
tween his external condition and this lofty place is 
strange, it may be, to some, and difficult of realization. 


54 The Biblical Idea of God 


Having no fixed abode, the leader of a tribe numbering 
perhaps fifteen hundred or two thousand souls (which 
may safely be inferred from the statement that there 
were three hundred and eighteen trained fighting men, 
“born in his household’’), represented as having rela- 
tions with the small city kings of Palestine, among 
them yet not of them, not, however, the only believer 
in the Most High God, as the account of Melchizedek 
shows, still his distinction is, and no distinction could 
be greater, that he is the only one to whom and through 
whom, in him and in his seed, was the promise of Re- 
demption made—a promise at last, after long cen- 
turies of waiting, and oftentimes obscured by doubt 
and disbelief, to be declared to and to bless all the 
nations, and so to overspread the earth. 

Why, now, we may ask, was it to the leader of this 
relatively small tribe, small when compared with the 
vast empires which have lately risen from their age- 
long graves, whose giant forms stalk before us in the 
far-distant past, and the advancing steps of whose 
armed hosts echo still as they march across continents, 
undismayed by forests and rivers, by mountains and 
plains, to subdue strange and alien peoples to their 
thrones, whose pride was in slaughter and whose mis- 
sion was to destroy—why was it to and through him 
and not to and through them that this disclosure of the 
character and purpose of the Most High God was given? 
According to merely human standards they should have 
_ been made the channels of this gracious revelation. 
But the ways of God are not the ways of men. They 


In the Patriarchal Period 55 


in their final overthrow declared only the divine jus- 
tice. This is the message of Isaiah concerning the 
Assyrian king, who “removed the bounds of the peo- 
ples and robbed their treasures” and in his haughty 
insolence boasted himself against the Lord Jehovah. 
Not to such ruthless destroyers, great as is their place 
and power in the estimation of the world, was the 
promise of Redemption given, but to the man of high 
religious faith, unmentioned by the national historians 
of his day, but a heroic figure in the records of the 
Bible, and known and honored where ancient con- 
querors and kings have been forgotten. According to 
every analogy of God’s working this is what we should 
expect. In nature and in human history the begin- 
nings of forms and of epoch-making movements are 
generally obscure and oftentimes difficult to trace. 
Rome, once the mighty mistress of the world, had its 
origin in times as yet unknown to recorded history, 
around which many myths and legends gathered, and 
whose earliest remains archeologists are slowly seeking 
to discover. So is it also with the origin of the Greeks. 
American history, in its most important and determin- 
ing elements, began with the faith and hopes of a few 
pilgrims who landed in the winter storms on a stern 
and ice-bound coast, to carve out of the wilderness a 
state, now among the most powerful of the world. 
Christianity had its distinctive origin in a little land 
and obscure city, and in the person and work of one 
who was outwardly only a Galilean peasant. 

Not, therefore, through imperial persons and events, 


56 The Biblical Idea of God 


but through Abraham, the sojourner in lands not his 
own, the chieftain of a tribe of herdsmen relatively few, 
were the promises made; and this fact, when rightly 
considered, gives impressiveness and truth to what his 
career tells us concerning essential contents in the Bib- 
lical conception of God. As expressed by him it con- 
nects itself with all that had been disclosed in the past 
and looks forward to that larger disclosure that is to 
follow. It is an essential and important part of the 
progressive process of God’s self-revelation. The origi- 
nal elements of power and wisdom, of justice and 
mercy, are there. But there appears also that broader 
and deeper conception of righteousness, a conception 
we owe to the Bible alone, which teaches that right- 
eousness is not merely retributive, but involves the 
attribute of grace. “Shall not the judge of all the earth 
do right?”? Abraham says in his plea for Sodom; that 
is, shall he not refrain from destroying the righteous 
and the wicked, shall not the presence of the one secure 
mercy for the other? The immorality of those cities 
of the plain was inexpressibly great. Vice in its vilest 
forms was practised not by a few, nor in secret, but 
openly and by “the men of the city—both young and 
old, all the people from every quarter” as the story of 
Lot distinctly states (Gen. 19: 4) and clearly shows to 
those who read it with understanding. We need not 
wonder, therefore, at the complete destruction with 
which they were overwhelmed. But yet, while God 
is revealed as severely just he is also willing to be gra- 
cious. It is also revealed, as in the greater destruction 


In the Patriarchal Period 57 


of the flood, that his moral laws are supreme, and that 
they are not unrelated to but oftentimes control the 
action of his natural laws. In his hands the forces 
which they guide are used as whips to scourge the un- 
speakable iniquities of man. 

But not only in physical nature is God revealed as 
supreme, but also in human history, disclosing thus, 
when we consider the waywardness of man’s will, a 
greater wisdom and a more commanding power. For 
what else does the promised blessing, which is to take 
centuries for its fulfilment, and is to come upon all na- 
tions, imply? Here is revealed a divine plan, clearly 
indicated from the beginning, involved in the prede- 
termined destinies of a people, and which, despite the 
vicissitudes, the conflicts, the rise and fall of peoples, 
the apparently inextricable confusion of the forces 
which contend with one another in man’s social life, is 
to reach a consummation in the welfare of the world. 

It is therefore no merely tribal God whom Abraham 
worships, limited in place and power, whose sole work 
was to care for the members of the tribe, regardless of 
their character and life. Such a conception is ascribed 
to him by some, but it rests upon a criticism which 
denies historical authority to the Bible story and 
makes it the idealized account of a later age. But if 
we eliminate Abraham and the promise from the twenty 
centuries of Revelation, if he is not an actual historic 
character, and the recorded events of his life did not 
actually occur, then the golden key which unlocks the 
real inner meaning of these long-past centuries is for- 


58 The Biblical Idea of God 


ever lost. Throughout them we shall search aimlessly 
in a maze of unrelated facts and hear inarticulate 
voices whose meaning we cannot comprehend. In 
Abraham and his faith, however, we continue to be- 
lieve, lie all the essential germs of the Biblical idea of 
God. 

We have dwelt thus-at length upon the life and be- 
lief of Abraham, because he is the most commanding 
personality in the patriarchal period, and as the first 
father of the Hebrew people his faith determined its 
distinctive career. He stands large and clear on the 
sacred page, and to him prophets and apostles and 
our Lord himself refer as the divinely chosen and 
authoritative human source, in their germinal form, of 
the truths they teach. 

_We pass on now to consider briefly the remaining 
persons whose lives make up the rest of the patriarchal 
period and give to it religious meaning. Isaac, in 
whom the threefold promise begins to find fulfilment, 
is a less distinguished character than his father. He is 
milder in disposition, more quiet and retired in life. 
His wanderings are limited to southern Palestine. He 
associates with its petty kings, and on a basis of equal- 
ity; but the account of him is brief and without the 
striking incidents in the life of Abraham. He inherits 
his father’s wealth in flocks and herds, but of different 
and greater importance is his spiritual inheritance of 
the promised blessing. Twice it is renewed to him; 
once when during a famine he is commanded nof to go 
down to Egypt, and again after the strife of his herds- 


In the Patriarchal Period 59 


men with those of Gerar and the digging of the wells. 
He also refers to it when he sends Jacob to Paddan- 
Aram. It is implied in pronouncing the stolen bless- 
ing upon Jacob, and is evidently the essential element 
in the birthright which Jacob purchased from his 
brother. ‘Thus appears once more conspicuously in the 
Biblical record those conceptions which bind the pa- 
triarchal lives together and give them a common reli- 
gious meaning. It is the God of his father, the God 
of Righteousness and Grace whom Isaac worships, and 
in whom he trusts. Living in a pagan land, where al- 
tars were built and sacrifices offered to many gods, and 
where religion was largely sensual and licentious, he is 
still a monotheist, holding a pure though undeveloped 
faith, whose essential elements he had inherited. 

The story of Jacob is of great human interest. It is 
an account of one who beginning on a low moral and 
religious plane developed at last a character worthy of 
respect and emulation. He stands out in clear con- 
trast with his brother Esau, whose interests lie mainly, 
if not altogether, in the material world, who is unable 
to see the real significance of the birthright and in a 
moment of physical exhaustion sells it for a mess of 
pottage. That to Jacob it meant merely the head- 
ship of the family and the inheritance of a double por- 
tion of his father’s wealth is not to be inferred from the 
Bible narrative. 'To him it would seem to have meant 
mainly the divine blessing involved in the promise, as 
the story of his later life apparently shows. That he 
understood its full meaning is not to be maintained. 


60 The Biblical Idea of God 


That could only be disclosed by its complete fulfilment. 
But that the great promise influenced and determined 
his religious life appears in the fact that it is directly 
repeated to him at decisive epochs, once on his way to 
Paddan-Aram in its complete threefold form in his 
dream at Bethel; again in part, but evidently implying 
the whole, when he is-told by God to return unto the 
land of his fathers; again after his return and when he 
had built an altar to Jehovah and had commanded the 
putting away of foreign gods among his people; and 
once again, in his old age at Beersheba on his journey 
to Egypt to see Joseph, his long-lost son, so deeply 
mourned. To the first of these he refers in his final 
sickness. Frequently also he speaks of the God of his 
fathers, which implies the revelation God had made 
to them. | 

All this clearly shows that through him is carried on 
the knowledge of the one true God whose gracious pur- 
pose includes not only the Hebrew people but also all 
mankind. The stream of Revelation, however, runs 
throughout the patriarchal period within fixed and nar- 
row limits. There are other lines of descent from 
Abraham, but it is not turned aside to them. It was 
written: “In Isaac shall thy seed be called.”” But with 
Jacob the promise widens beyond the limits of a fam- 
ily. There is no selection of one of his many children. 
All are included within the limits of the promise, and 
are also the channels by whom it is to be conveyed to 
the entire world. Individuals, nay generations, might 
fail to apprehend and receive its blessings and turn to 


In the Patriarchal Period 61 


the worship of other gods, but the people who have de- 
scended from the patriarch Jacob stand out with strik- 
ing distinctness among the peoples of the earth as the 
possessors of a religion which presents the loftiest con- 
ceptions of the nature and character of God. 

It was evidently not the purpose of the writers of 
Biblical history to trace in detail the lives of the fathers 
of the Hebrew race. It is not biographies that they 
have written. God, not man, was their supreme sub- 
ject, or rather God speaking in and through man of 
himself; and it is the progressive course of this revealed 
word that is distinctly traced in the sacred books. 

We, therefore, conclude this lecture with pointing 
out how in the career of Joseph the essential elements 
of the conception of God continue to appear. He is 
still the God of promise, the God of righteousness and 
grace. Joseph’s life is recorded more at length than 
that of any other of the sons of Jacob. It has, as Pro- 
fessor Moulton tells us, the character of epic story. 
The favorite of his father, envied and hated by his 
brothers, sold by them as a slave, this young Hebrew 
prince, as he has been called, becomes the object of a 
lawless passion by his master’s wife, resists her ad- 
vances, is falsely accused and thrown into prison, and 
is then made, under Pharaoh, the ruler of all Egypt. 
His life, so filled with sudden and striking changes, 
illustrates with impressive power that kind of charac- 
ter which faith in the God of promise alone can form. 
Tested by temptation to sensual sin, and also by the 
subtler and more persistent temptations of undeserved 


62 The Biblical Idea of God 


misfortunes and then of the sudden possession of auto- 
cratic power, he yet never fails to fulfil the duties of 
his station, whether as slave or prisoner, and so rises 
to leadership in each position, revealing those traits 
which fitted him at last to exercise the powers belong- 
ing to imperial rule. Separated in youth from the re- 
ligious influences of the home, surrounded henceforth 
by the splendors and attractions of Egyptian worship, 
with its innumerable gods, its elaborate ritual, its mag- 
nificent temples, its dominant and haughty priesthood, 
marrying the daughter of the priest of On, where the 
great sun-god was adored, connected thus with the 
most powerful sacerdotal family of his time—yet in the 
midst of all these moulding influences which would 
have drawn many away from the faith of their fathers, 
he remains true to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob. He regards him with reverential fear, as he 
tells his brethren when testing their truth and before 
he reveals himself to them (Gen. 42:18). He trusts 
his providential care, saying, after making himself 
known, that “God did send me before you to preserve 
life’ (Gen. 45:5). In his message to his father he 
tells him that “God hath made me lord of all Egypt” 
(Gen. 45:9). To Joseph God is also the interpreter 
of dreams, as he says to the butler and baker and 
Pharaoh (Gen. 40:8; 41:16). God also determines 
future events and controls the forces of nature, for in 
making known the meaning of Pharaoh’s dream, he 
tells the king that “the thing is established by God, 
and God will shortly bring it to pass” (Gen. 41: 32). 


In the Patriarchal Period 63 


To Joseph God is also the personal source and execu- 
tor of moral law. “How, then,” said he to the wife 
of Potiphar, the Egyptian captain of the guard, “can 
I do this great wickedness and sin against God? ”’ (Gen. 
39:9). 

But while these conceptions of the divine nature and 
character could be found in the religion and moral code 
of Egypt; while, also, as some scholars claim, back of 
all the prevalent and degraded polytheism there may 
have been the lofty monotheistic belief with which 
Joseph could deeply sympathize, yet there was not 
found there the distinctive element of the religion of the 
Hebrews. To no Egyptian priest or king had been given 
the revelation of-the promise. But throughout his 
life, as shepherd boy in Palestine, as slave and prisoner 
and autocratic ruler in Egypt, this was the distinctive 
faith of Joseph, the elemental force in developing his 
character, which shielded him in temptation, sustained 
him in the guidance of an empire, and also, greater 
even and nobler than this exalted work, led him to be 
gracious and forgiving to his brethren when their guilty 
consciences made them fearful of retribution for their 
crime. At the end of a long life Joseph said unto his 
brethren: “I die; but God will surely visit you, and 
bring you up out of this land unto the land which he 
sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob—and ye 
shall carry up my bones from hence” (Gen. 50: 24, 25). 
Thus, in the eloquent words of the author of the epistle 
to the Hebrews, after enumerating the religious heroes 
of Israel’s past, “these all died in faith, not having 


64 The Biblical Idea of God 


received the promises but having seen them and greeted 
them from afar, and having confessed that they were 
strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb. 11: 13). 
By their faith in the fulfilment of the divine promise 
they were sustained, and in this faith lay the distinctive 
and differentiating conception through the patriarchal 
period of the Biblical idea of God. 


IT 
THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 


IN THE MOSAIC PERIOD, OR AS FOUND IN EXODUS, 
LEVITICUS, NUMBERS, AND DEUTERONOMY 


WE have traced the Biblical idea of God through the 
primitive and patriarchal periods and are now to con- 
sider the period between the exodus from Egypt and 
the conquest and settlement of Palestine. From the 
death of Joseph to the birth of Moses the time as gen- 
erally computed is about four hundred years, although 
some chronologists would reduce it to a little more 
than half that number. However this may be, there 
is, at any rate, a long period of silence concerning 
which no historical details are given. The descendants 
of Jacob are herdsmen, dwelling in the fertile land of 
Goshen, in the northern part of Egypt and east of the 
branches of the Nile. There are not wanting indica- 
tions that to some extent they had felt the influence 
of the high material civilization which the Egyptians 
had developed. At first, as relatives of Joseph, and 
also doubtless because they were an Asiatic people, 
they were welcomed and kindly treated. For the Hyk- 
sos, or shepherd kings, who were themselves Asiatics, 
had conquered Egypt and were then rulers of the land. 
How long their rule continued is a matter of dispute. 
At some time, however, before the birth of Moses, it 


had ended, and the native Egyptian kings had regained 
65 


66 The Biblical Idea of God 


their lost power. ‘This explains the statement at the 
beginning of the book of Exodus that “a king arose 
who knew not Joseph,” one of the many statements of 
sacred history upon which late discoveries cast light 
and to which confirmation is given. It was then that 
the oppression of the Hebrews began. Because of the 
fact that they were Asiatics, like the Hyksos kings, the 
Egyptian Pharaoh feared that, dwelling as they did on 
the northeastern border-land, should another invasion 
occur they might join with their racial relatives and 
help to reconquer the country. Hence they were sub- 
jected to severe toil in building “store-cities, Pithom 
and Raamses,”’ and the attempt was also made to re- 
duce their numbers by putting to death, at birth, the 
male children. ‘These store-cities have been discovered 
and excavated by Naville the French archeologist and 
their remains confirm the Bible history. 

It is a familiar story how Moses escaped the fate 
purposed by the Pharaoh. Evidently it was the result 
not of a series of fortuitous circumstances and events, 
but of a plan formed by his mother. This is indicated 
by the placing of the little ark, in which the babe lay, 
where the daughter of the king was wont doubtless to 
come to bathe, by the expected appeal of helpless in- 
fancy to a woman’s heart, and by stationing the sister 
to watch and to suggest the child’s mother as the 
nurse. Thus it came about that throughout his earliest 
years—for how long it is not stated—Moses grew up 
in a Hebrew home. During these years the deepest 
and most lasting impressions are made on the mind 


In the Mosaic Period 67 


and heart, especially those of the family religion. 
That they were never effaced from the heart of Moses 
is clearly shown by his subsequent career. 

But they might have been effaced by the subtle and 
continuous influences which surrounded him through- 
out his later youth and manhood, for he became the 
adopted son of the Egyptian princess, was instructed 
in all Egyptian wisdom (Acts 7: 22), subjected to the 
moulding force of the luxuries of the Egyptian court 
and the splendors of the idolatrous worship of the 
Egyptian religion, and he might perhaps have attained 
to the rule of an Egyptian prince. Around this period 
of his life many Jewish legends have gathered. But 
rejecting these products of the fancy for the sober truth 
of the Bible narrative, it is certain that he never forgot 
he was the son of a Hebrew mother and one of the 
heirs of the divinely given promise. He therefore never 
lost his sympathy with his toiling and suffering breth- 
ren, and when by an act expressive of this sympathy 
he killed an Egyptian oppressor and was compelled to 
flee from the vengeful wrath of the king he became, at 
forty years of age, himself a shepherd in the mountains 
of Midian, and for forty years more, during this quiet 
life so conducive to meditation, brooded doubtless over 
the knowledge and experience gained in Egypt, and 
especially over the distinctive characteristics and truths 
of the family religion, the gracious revelations made to 
the ancient fathers of his race, and the predetermined 
destiny of that race—that it should become a channel 
of blessing to all the world. 


68 The Biblical Idea of God 


That these were among the subjects of his thought 
the whole character of the mighty work of his later life 
would seem clearly to indicate. The simple and nar- 
row interests of the ordinary shepherd occupation do 
not suffice to breed great men who are to be leaders in 
great events. There must be something more and 
greater to awaken the deeper forces and nobler ambi- 
tions of the human soul. Nature must indeed con- 
tribute the inborn genius which the foremost leaders of 
mankind reveal; but there must be added the forma- 
tive influences of education and the quickening power 
of great occasions which call that genius forth. God 
uses men and means fitted for his ends. Thus Moses 
was natively endowed with powers which few men have 
possessed; and by his training as a Hebrew boy, when 
he was taught the sacred traditions of his race, by his 
associations with the wise rulers and learned priests of 
Egypt, and by his secluded and meditative shepherd 
life, when these moulding influences sank more deeply 
into his spirit and fashioned it for future uses—by all 
these he was being fitted for the great legislative work 
he afterward accomplished of forming a people into a 
nation by means of a great hope and an organized law. 

Out of this condition in the solitude of the desert he 
was suddenly called by the voice of God speaking from 
the burning bush. Centuries had passed since that 
voice had been heard on earth. The last time was 
when God spoke to Jacob at Beersheba, as he was 
going down to Egypt, and bade him fear not, and at 
the same time renewed the promise. There is no ac- 


In the Mosaic Period 69 


count of such a supernatural event in the life of Joseph, 
although to him was given the spirit of divination and 
the wisdom to guide the destinies of an empire. We 
might have thought that such divine voices would be 
frequent; and they would have been, if, as many 
claim, all accounts of supernatural events are only the 
work of man’s myth-making imagination. But the 
Bible distributes such supernatural occurrences with no 
lavish hand. There is a significant reserve in its ac- 
counts. Only at times of supreme importance, when 
epochal changes are taking place, does God miracu- 
lously manifest himself; and herein lies no slight proof 
that the Bible is a historical record not merely of the 
ways of man but also of the ways of God. 

When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, 
the first words identified him with the God of the past, 
who had spoken to the patriarchs. “J am the God of 
thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, 
and the God of Jacob.” It was no new and strange 
deity who made himself known and commanded obe- 
dience. A celebrated German scholar has tried, in 
direct contradiction to the Bible, to show that the God, 
whose message Moses brought to his people, was a 
Kenite god worshipped by his father-in-law Jethro. 
But German scholars delight in fanciful and theoretic 
reconstructions of Biblical history. All such attempts, 
however, show only the ingenuity of the writer and 
contribute nothing to our knowledge of the facts, ex- 
cept, it may be, in stimulating a more thorough re- 
search into the foundations of our faith. Unfortu- 


70 The Brblical Idea of God 


nately, many, relying implicitly on the authority at- 
tached to great names, are misled by such critical re- 
constructions, and their belief in the historic truth of 
the Bible is lessened if not destroyed. It is time that 
we cease to sit with childlike, unquestioning reverence 
at the feet of such teachers, who however wide and 
minute their scholarship are not always clear and con- 
sistent thinkers. The study and the classroom need 
the education which the more vital and complex life 
beyond their walls alone can give if we are to be saved 
from conclusions contrary to the common sense of the 
world. Had Moses brought to his people a Kenite 
deity, hitherto unknown to them, his task of winning 
their acceptance and following would have been far 
greater than it was, if not impossible. There is no 
stronger conservative force than the religious spirit. 
Inherited religions are not lightly and easily changed. 
It was only when Moses announced to the Hebrew peo- 
ple a new revelation of the God of their fathers, and 
when also this new revelation met the conditions of 
their bondage, answered their groanings and _ their 
prayers, and gave gracious announcement of relief 
through the near fulfilment of the long-before-given 
and long-deferred promise that he could secure a 
hearing. When the silence of many centuries is broken 
the same voice speaks and it speaks the same message 
of a great hope. The essential elements are there, but 
there is also an advance. For in the Bible God’s self- 
revelation, as I have said, is progressive. In this re- 
spect it is like the manifestation of himself in nature. 


In the Mosaic Period 71 


Another step is taken in the fulfilment of the promise. 
Great increase in the posterity has already taken place, 
as was foretold. Now there is to be the first move- 
ment toward the possession of the promised land. 
The third and greatest element remains, but centuries 
must pass before the fulness of time shall come when 
it shall be fulfilled. 

The progression in the self-revelation of the divine 
nature and character does not, however, consist merely 
in this partial fulfilment of the promise. Moses is con- 
vinced that he hears the voice of the God of his fathers, 
and hides his face lest he might see God and die. But 
there was no visible form except the burning bush, 
which was not consumed. Then when he has received 
his commission to lead his people out of bondage, and 
shrinks as every truly great man will shrink from the 
greatness of the work, saying, “ Who am I that I should 
go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the 
children of Israel out of Egypt?” and is assured that 
God will be with him, he seeks to know the divine name, 
saying: “When I come unto the children of Israel, and 
shall say unto them, the God of your fathers hath sent 
me unto you; and they shall say unto me, What is his 
name? what shall I say unto them? And God said 
unto Moses, I am that I am. Thus shalt thou say 
unto the children of Israel, J am hath sent me unto 
you” (Ex. 3: 13, 14). 

These words, I am that I am, are remarkable for their 
brief simplicity and profound significance. They have 
been translated in various ways. In the margin of the 


42 The Biblical Idea of God 


American Standard Version, beside that of the text 
which is here given, they are rendered: I am, because I 
am, or I am who am, or I will be that I will be. This in- 
dicates some uncertainty as to their precise meaning, 
and scholars are divided in the support of each ren- 
dering. But the revisers, both English and American, 
have adopted the same translation, which gives it the 
great weight of their authority. Yet much is to be said 
in favor of the rendering: I will be that I will be. For 
while the idea of being here expressed is an idea under- 
lying all others, beyond which the human mind cannot 
go, for even power, a fundamental conception, implies 
some kind of existence which exercises it, and God is 
here identified with being in its ultimate form, yet the 
Hebrew mind, unlike the Greek, was not metaphysical 
in its nature. It did not delight in curious inquiries 
concerning ultimate reality, thus losing itself in the 
formless mists of abstract truth. It dealt rather, as I 
have said, with truth in its concrete and experiential 
form; and it is through the Hebrew mind that God has 
especially revealed himself. Moreover, the future ren- 
dering is in harmony with God’s disclosure of himself 
in the promise. Not mere being, therefore, a vague 
conception taken by itself, but being made continu- 
ously manifest in coming historic persons and events 
is ascribed to God, and, while culminating in one su- 
preme person and event, does not end even then, but 
goes on with progressive power until the whole earth 
shall be filled with the knowledge of the truth and grace 
of the living God. There is thus, to use Bacon’s fine 


In the Mosaic Period 43 


phrase, a “germinant and springing fulfilment” sug- 
gested by the future form of the divine name. “ Yes- 
terday, to-day, and forever” are found in it, but with 
especial emphasis on forever. 

It should be noted, also, that this divine name, what- 
ever rendering you may choose, is expressed in terms 
of self-consciousness or personality. God says of him- 
self, “I am,” or “I will be.” This is not a statement 
of vague, indefinite, incomprehensible, impersonal be- 
ing. Psychologists and philosophers may seek to de- 
stroy confidence in the reality of the self by questions 
of seeming wisdom which no one can adequately an- 
swer. But, as was said in the first lecture, among all 
certainties there is nothing more certain than the real- 
ity of the self. It underlies and appears in all convic- 
tions of the human mind. You must radically change 
all languages, eliminating much, and reorganize all 
human society, transforming its essential structure, if 
you would conform these to the doctrine that the self 
is an unreal conception of the mind. The religion and 
philosophy of India have taught that the self is an illu- 
sion, or at most a momentary bubble on the limitless 
sea of impersonal being. But such religion and philos- 
ophy degrades man and destroys the joy and freedom 
of his life. Moreover, the very statement of doubt or 
denial involves the affirmation of the self. If you say, 
as I have sometimes heard students just entering on 
the study of philosophy say, with all the confidence 
of unlearned youth, “I do not know that I exist,” the 
reply is, “ Who does not know?” and they inevitably 


74 Lhe Biblical Idea of God 


answer “I do not know.” While, therefore, the terms 
they use are in the form of a negation, their answer in- 
volves an affirmation. In the very doubt there is as- 
serted the existence of the personal self. This was long 
ago effectively pointed out by St. Augustine. But 
there seems to be nothing so impervious to truth as 
the human mind. The same old errors find confident 
and constant repetition, and systems of philosophy are 
each generation built anew, as if they did not rest on 
the shifting sands of mere opinion but on the solid 
basis of the facts of consciousness. For the ultimate 
deliverances of consciousness are the foundations of all 
knowledge, and by them we judge all forms of truth 
and error. They are clear and convincing to the human 
mind, although they may not be made the subject of 
direct and reflective investigation. It is only the mind 
confused and lost in the mazes of philosophic systems 
to whom they are obscured. When, therefore, Moses 
made known to the Hebrew people this divine name, 
expressive of a personal consciousness and of an abid- 
ing selfhood, he was easily understood. They accepted 
it at once as authorizing his leadership. It would be 
clear also to Pharaoh. For the religious philosophy of 
Egypt is said to have affirmed the existence of a univer- 
sal and personal being the unseen reality back of and 
beneath all visible and tangible phenomena. Pharaoh 
indeed disclaims any knowledge of Jehovah, the God 
of the Hebrews, but this may merely mean that he 
knows no god of that name worshipped by the Egyp- 
tians. 


In the Mosaic Period 75 


Much has been made by some scholars of the state- 
ment made to Moses, “I am Jehovah” (or Yaveh, as 
it is often now more exactly written), “and I appeared 
unto Abraham and unto Isaac, and unto Jacob as God © 
Almighty, but by my name Jehovah I was not known 
unto them” (Ex. 6:23). This, however, is to insist on 
a rigid literalness of interpretation. The word Jeho- 
vah, as Doctor Orr says in his “Problem of the Old 
Testament,” is not to be taken as a mere vocable. 'To 
the Hebrews, as to primitive peoples generally, the 
value of a name lay not in its sound but in its meaning. 
Jehovah, while used in earlier days among the Hebrews, 
and not unknown among other peoples, as the tablets 
of Babylonia have shown, in and from the time of °' 
the exodus possessed a deeper significance, declared 
and recognized through the ministry of Moses. There 
was an advance in the knowledge of its meaning. Not 
merely self-existence and power, but compassion and 
the putting forth of power in the redemption of his 
people was more fully indicated. “I know their sor- 
rows,” God said to Moses, “and am come down to de- 
liver them” (Ex. 3:7). 

As has been said, the self-revelation of God is mainly 
by events and the personal experiences of individuals. | 
This is what makes the Bible a vital book and enables 
it to appeal to all classes and conditions, to every age 
and clime. Hence in the career of Moses God speaks 
not alone out of the burning bush, but with increasing 
intensity and effect by means of the ten plagues. It is 
true that they add nothing essential to the idea of God | 


76 The Brblical Idea of God 


disclosed in the creation. He who made the world 
must also control the world. God, therefore, now 
makes manifest his power and grace in so using the 
forces of nature as to secure the welfare of his people, 
accomplish the fulfilment of the promise, and make 
himself known to the oppressor as well as to the op- 
pressed. “The Egyptians,” said he to Moses, “shall 
know that I am Jehovah when I stretch forth my hand 
upon Egypt” (Ex. 7:5), and also to Israel: “Ye shall 
know that I am Jehovah your God who bringeth you 
out from under the burdens of the Egyptians” 
(Ex 6 0). 

The plagues in themselves were not new and strange 
experiences. They are known in Egypt to-day, and 
sometimes occur in their natural order within the limits 
of a year. Their miraculous character consisted in 
their greater intensity, in their subjection to the com- 
mand of Moses, in the distinction made between the 
dwellings of the Hebrews and the Egyptians, and in 
the end for which they were used of rescuing the chil- 
dren of Israel from bondage. Nature and the super- 
natural are never opposed in the Bible. The one is 
God’s ordinary way of working; the other is above the 
ordinary to secure results beyond the scope of nature’s 
mechanism. The supernatural is the world of will and 
freedom; the natural is that of necessity and physical 
causation. Thus considered as supernatural events, 
the plagues reveal the moral nature of God. They 
make known his power, justice, and grace, elemental 
attributes of which the entire Bible is the supreme reve- 
lation. 


In the Mosaic Period fue 


It is not possible, nor necessary, within the scope of 
these lectures, to trace the Hebrew history in detail. 
The unfolding of the Biblical idea of God is mainly 
found in the great epochs of that history. In the 
Mosaic period, beginning with the rescue from Egypt, \ 
it reaches its culmination in the giving of the law. ; 
The story of this is of impressive dramatic power. The 
scene, as was fitting, is set among lofty mountains ris- 
~ ing to a height of more than six thousand feet, in the 
midst of which stands Sinai, sacred once, it is said, as 
the site where Sin, the moon-god of Ur, was worshipped, 
but having now a vastly greater sacredness, because 
the God of Israel, out of lightnings and thunderings 
and earthquakes and clouds darkly shrouding the 
mountain’s summit, with awe-awakening voice, uttered 
the ten words which to this day to Jew and Christian 
are a supreme expression of his will. 

It has been said, and to me it seems to have been 
rightly said, that if nothing else proves the special in- 
spiration of the great Hebrew lawgiver it is proved by 
the Decalogue. For who among the lawgivers of the 
world has given such a summary of religious truth and 
moral duty? Not Solon, not Lycurgus, not the great 
code of Hammurabi has stated the obligations which 
belong to the relationships of man with man with such 
brevity, simplicity, directness, and comprehensive 
scope. It covers all essential relationships, conserves 
all essential values, inculcates all essential principles of 
action. Life, property, truth, the purity and integrity 
of the family, which is the unit of society, are secured 
if these commandments are obeyed. The first of the 


78 The Biblical Idea of God 


second table, “Honor thy father and thy mother that 
thy days may be long in the land which Jehovah thy 
God giveth thee,” imposes a duty which is the origin 
and type of all human obedience. Beginning with the 
child, it insures that subordinate attitude toward all 
rightful authority which is the strength and glory of 
the man and constitutes the elemental force and safety 
of the social fabric. For out of the insubordination of 
childhood and youth spring the destruction of the state 
and the reign of every ruthless passion. In the last 
commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” is indicated 
the ultimate source of all the social evils which the 
others seek to guard against. For if men do not covet 
what is not their own there would be no murder, nor 
adultery, nor theft, nor falsehood: Thus sin, in its 
last analysis, is identified with selfishness, and its secret 
source 1s found in the human heart. 

But the deepest truth of the ten words is found in 
their religious teaching, and in the vital connection be- 
tween this and their moral precepts. The codes of 
Confucius and Gautama Buddha, however ethically 
noble and comprehensive they may be, are not rooted 
in the religious consciousness and convictions of man- 
kind. They are agnostic in character, neither affirming 
nor denying God’s existence, but merely ignoring it. 
The Mosaic code, however, begins with the affirmation, 
“T am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the 
land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” thus set- 
ting forth and confirming by a series of impressive his- 
toric events his loving-kindness and tender mercy. 


/ 


In the Mosaic Period 79 


Then follows the first commandment. “Thou shalt 
have no other gods before [or beside] me.” 

It would seem that in these words monotheism is 
clearly taught; and so the Jewish and Christian churches 
have always believed. But by some modern scholars 
it is claimed that nothing more is indicated than monol- 
atry, that is, the worship of one god alone, although 
the existence of other gods is admitted. Ethical mono- 
theism, as it is called, is held to have been first taught 
by the prophets of the eighth century—Amos, Hosea, 
Isaiah, and Micah. But this contention rests on cer- 
tain presumptions concerning the early religion of 
Israel which we cannot consider now, but will refer to 
when we discuss the teaching of these prophets. Here 
it is only necessary to say that, accepting the Biblical 
history on its face value, we have found monotheism in 
the earlier portions of the history, a fact not denied by 
those scholars who yet deny its historic value. It 
would be strange, therefore, when at this time so great 
a religious teacher has appeared and so much of an 
advance in the unfolding of religious truth is being 
made, that in the basic idea of all religion there should 
be a falling away from the high position hitherto at- 
tained and an approach to the degrading polytheism 
of other peoples. With that in its extreme extent and 
lowest forms Moses was acquainted. His life in Egypt 
familiarized him with it. If, however, he was God’s 
messenger to his people, as from this time onward the 
entire Bible claims, he could have taught nothing else 
than the existence of the one true God and of him 


80 The Brblical Idea of God 


alone. The Mosaic code, then, is founded on a pure 
and exalted monotheism, and its moral precepts are 
presented as God’s commandments. Not, therefore, in 
physical nature, impressive and manifold as are its 
laws, but in the moral world the will of God finds its 
supreme expression. It is in this that the legislation of 
Moses exhibits its distinctive character and in this lies 
one of the secrets of its power. It is an appeal not to 
the intellect alone but to the conscience of mankind. 
It is an appeal, also, sustained by an innate conscious- 
_ ness of a universal power which makes for righteous- 
ness and truth. 

There is taught, also, in the Decalogue God’s invisi- 
ble and intangible nature which no earthly form can 
represent. Image-worship, so universal, so intimately 
associated with the prevalent polytheism, was forbid- 
den. The cherubim, whose wings overshadowed the 
mercy-seat, did not body forth the unseen God, and 
within the ark of the covenant, in the Holy of Holies, 
as already noted, was found only the moral and reli- 
gious law. 

The sacredness of the divine name, which is expres- 
sive of the divine nature, is also strictly enforced. 
Guilt is attached to all vain uses of it. Thus reverence 
for God was inculcated, and language, which so inti- 
mately expresses character, was to be purified from all 
profanity. 

But while the introductory words teach God’s re- 
demptive mercy, the second commandment teaches 
also his even-handed and retributive justice, as well as 


In the Mosaic Pertod 81 


his abiding grace. He will visit iniquity with certain 
punishment; but at the same time sin is declared to be 
self-destructive within the limits of the third and 
fourth generations and loving-kindness is shown unto 
thousands of generations of those who love God and 
keep his commandments. Thus mercy is exalted be- 
yond justice as the leading attribute revealed in the 
divine administration of the world. No conflict be- 
tween them is suggested, but “mercy seasons justice” 
and secures what in all government is the noblest end 
of law, not retribution but obedience. It is the end 
which lawmakers have doubtless aimed at, but have 
relied mainly, if not altogether, on force and penalty 
to secure. But these alone have tended to brutalize 
and harden the offender. Mercy, which does not con- 
done nor minimize the evil, and does not arbitrarily 
set aside its consequences, this alone can change the 
spirit and purpose of him who does the evil, for it alone 
touches and quickens the deepest emotions of the heart 
and thus subdues the stubborn obduracy of the will. 
Not the law but the gospel is that divine power which 
wins the world to a new obedience; and this is prefig- 
ured in the Old Testament even in the giving of the 
law from the frowning heights of Sinai. The church 
seems sometimes to have forgotten this and to have 
relied too largely on the terrors of retribution. But 
while law is to be set forth and enforced, and its results 
are not to be ignored, yet, as Paul says, we are saved 
by hope, and it is the goodness of God which leads us 
to repentance. 


82 The Biblical Idea of God 


Lastly, a day of rest was set apart, not merely for 
freedom from toil, but for the better cultivation of the 
higher nature, which the cares and labors of the week 
too often tend to limit or prevent. The Sabbath is 
one of the great religious institutions, established, as 
our Lord tells us, for the race, to be observed and hal- 
lowed, that the religion of the Bible may not perish 
from the world. 

Looking now at the Decalogue as a whole we shall 
find that its great and distinctive character does not 
lie merely in its moral precepts. Other moral codes, 
even those of savages, state and enforce these. It lies 
rather in what we may call its architectural plan. For 
the genius of an architect is shown not so much by the 
materials he uses as by the stately symmetry and 
beauty of their arrangement and form. All parts are 
combined into one splendid whole to express a single 
great conception. Thus in the Decalogue the Hebrew 
lawgiver has selected the rights and duties that are 
fundamental and joined them in an essential relation- 
ship with the profoundest religious truths. It would 
clearly seem that this is a work beyond the power of 
an uninspired human mind. Such certainly is the 
claim of the Bible, and such we believe to have been 
the truth. The ten words are spoken not by the voice 
of Moses but by the voice of God. 

We might have thought that such a law, so given, 
especially in connection with events disclosing super- 
natural power, would have made immediate and last- 
ing impression on the minds of those to whom it was 


In the Mosaie Period 83 


commanded. But, while Moses was in the mount, the 
people, forgetful of the gracious way in which they had 
been led, and saying “As for this Moses we know not 
what is become of him,” turned aside to the worship 
of the golden calf. Then the just anger of Jehovah 
waxed hot against them, and punishment severe and 
fearful fell at once upon them, for they suffered a great 
slaughter. But this is not the most impressive part of 
this event. It is after this scene of sin and retribution, 
when Moses had returned to the mountain and hewn 
out anew the two tables of the law, that Jehovah de- 
scended in the cloud and proclaimed his character in 
these wonderful and ever-memorable words: “Jehovah, 
Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, 
and abundant in loving-kindness and truth, keeping 
loving-kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and 
transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear 
the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
children and upon the children’s children, upon the 
third and upon the fourth generation” (Ex. 34: 6, 7). 
Where in all religious literature of tribes or nations 
will you find a statement such as this? Not infre- 
quently the remark is heard that the God of the Old 
Testament is harsh, capricious, merciless; that his rule 
is merely retributive, and that only in the New Testa- 
ment he appears as gracious and forgiving. But such 
remarks rest on ignorance or a failure to comprehend 
the fulness of God’s revelation of himself. Once more, 
as we shall have occasion again and again to point out, 
it must be said that, in dealing with this world so sin- 


84 The Biblical Idea of God 


ful, so guilty, so sorrowing, his law is supremely re- 
demptive in its end and nature. This the Apostle Paul 
affirms, saying that it is God’s purpose “to sum up 
all things in Christ” and that the working out of the 
divine plan is “to the praise of the glory of his grace” 
(Eph. 1:6, 10). But Paul only stated in more explicit 
terms what was spoken to the Hebrew lawgiver more 
than thirty centuries ago. Law is only a uniform mode 
of working, and among rational beings involves ends to 
be secured. It expresses God’s ways in both the ma- 
terial and moral worlds. 

If we have no belief in God and are without the 
knowledge of his ways and ends, to us the worlds of 
nature and of man are a chaos meaningless, inexpressi- 
ble, awakening in thoughtful minds to whom the Bible 
is a sealed book both horror and despair. Looking 
upon the surging forces of evil and destruction which 
evermore contend with and apparently overwhelm the 
good, and which seem to make up this little world of 
ours, they have used language like that of the guilt- 
worn Macbeth: 


“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
And then is heard no more: it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing. .. .” 


But this extreme expression may not be alone the 
utterance of a guilty soul, oppressed by a sense of sin 
and appalled by the cloud of death which darkens 


In the Mosaic Period 85 


around our earthly end. Profound and noble minds, 
unillumed by the light of revealed truth, have felt 
the mystery and apparent hopelessness of human life. 
To the Greeks the joy and beauty of the golden age 
lay in the past, in the early dawn of life’s brief day. 
Their philosophers and poets saw no shining morn be- 
yond the unfathomed darkness of its close. And, it is 
true, there are expressions of doubt in the literature of 
Israel occasioned by the religious experiences of indi- . 
viduals in times of trouble. Such are found in the 
Psalms and especially in the book of Job. But the 
Hebrew mind, as expressed in its great teachers, looked 
confidently to the future. There was to them a di- 
vinely guided, progressive movement to issue in the 
establishment of a kingdom of God, an abiding king- 
dom of righteousness and truth. It is on this convic- 
tion alone, in the midst of the stress and storm of the 
conflict of evil forces, which the age-long history of man 
reveals, that we can stand hopeful and serene. 

It was this conviction that sustained the great He- 
brew lawgiver as he led his people from Egyptian bond- 
age. No one who would benefit mankind ever con- 
tended with difficulties harder to overcome. They lay 
not in external conditions, in the desert and the ene- 
mies to be met, but rather in the character and spirit 
of the people he would help. For they were “stifi- 
necked and rebellious,’ ever fearful and complaining 
when hindrances were to be overcome, unmindful of 
Egyptian slavery and toil, longing for the flesh-pots 
they had left, and without faith in the fulfilment of the 


86 The Biblical Idea of God 


promise, a people lacking hope and the courage which 
hope brings. But with a sublime patience, sustained 
by a trust in God’s presence and help which never fal- 
tered but once, Moses overcame these difficulties which 
would have broken down a weaker and less noble spirit, 
and at last with conquest and success behind him stood 
upon Nebo’s Mount, overlooking the promised land 
which he was to see but not to enter, and dying there 
was buried in an unmarked grave, which no man has 
ever seen, having finished the work to which he had 
been called. 

The book of Deuteronomy sums up and restates the 
Mosaic legislation. Concerning this book to-day there 
is an intense conflict of critical opinion. Radical schol- 
ars ascribe it to the time of Josiah, about 621 B. C., 
gotten up to bring about a religious reform, the work 
of certain priests and prophets. Some allow that its 
contents consist of a much earlier legislation but that 
its form is new. In plain terms, then, the book as we 
have it is a pious fraud. But, as opposed to this view, 
it is only necessary here to point out that the book 
itself in distinct and positive terms claims to give the 
words of Moses, giving the time when and the place 
where he, at the close of his life, in a series of eloquent 
orations, recounted the events from Sinai to the plain 
of Moab, and restated the law with the aim of secur- 
ing obedience to its commandments. It is a continuous 
appeal to conscience and will. There is in it an awe- 
inspiring litany of curses and blessings. It adds noth- 
ing essential to what had been already taught concern- 


In the Mosaic Period 87 


ing the nature and character of God. But it states in 
more explicit terms his unity and sole existence and 
that he is the supreme object of love and worship. 
“Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God is one Jehovah, and 
thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart 
and with all thy soul and with all thy might” (Deut. 
6:4, 5). “Know, therefore, this day and lay it to thy 
heart that Jehovah he is God in heaven above and 
upon the earth beneath. There is none else” (Deut. 
4:39). “Behold, unto Jehovah, thy God, belongeth 
heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all 
that is therein” (Deut. 10:14). “For Jehovah your 
God, he is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great 
God, the mighty and the terrible, who regardeth not 
persons nor taketh reward” (Deut. 10:17). Could 
monotheism be more exactly and positively stated than 
in these impressive words? 

But this one God is a moral God, a truth which can- 
not be too often nor too strongly stated. In the song 
with which Deuteronomy ends and which gives the 
last words of Moses and reveals him as a poet as well 
as a legislator and orator, he says of God: 


“His work is perfect. 
For all his ways are justice. 
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, 
‘ . oP] 
Just and right is he. (Deut. 32:3, 4.) 


This righteousness and justice, here proclaimed in 
words, is also shown in act. The inflicting of penalty 
on his people, something which a merely tribal god is 


88 The Biblical Idea of God 


not supposed to do, has all along declared it. But it is 
with even more impressiveness declared in the destruc- 
tion of the Canaanites. This is sometimes said to 
have been the ruthless exercise of arbitrary power. 
But to one who understands the licentious character 
of their religion it will not seem so. Certainly the 
Bible says that it was because the cup of their iniquity 
was full. “For the wickedness of these nations Jeho- 
vah thy God doth drive them out from before thee” 
(Deut. 9:5), a statement more than once repeated. 
Yet it was not because of the righteousness of Israel 
that they had been chosen (Deut. 9:5, 6), but because 
of the divine grace, a grace declared in the promise, 
and not to be confined to Israel, but at last to be 
shown to all the nations of the earth. Again and again 
throughout this book, which, it has been said, possesses 
an eloquence beyond that of the world’s most famous 
orators, Moses refers to the promise made to Abraham. 
It is the key-note of his legislation. It links past and 
present and future in an underlying harmony which at 
last will overcome earth’s discords and resolve them 
into one with itself. 

I have thus far made no mention of the law of cere- 
monies. Large space is given to it in the Bible and the 
directions are specific and minute. The tabernacle, 
with its elaborate furniture, is twice described; and one 
entire book, Leviticus, is given to the ritual of offer- 
ings. There are also other ceremonial laws in Exodus 
and Numbers. Is all this meaningless, an inheritance 
from a largely ritualistic past, when forms and not 


In the Mosaic Period 89 


moral duties mainly constituted the religion of the 
people, or is it a much later addition, elaborated dur- 
ing the captivity and brought back to Jerusalem at the 
return? It is certainly given as the work of Moses, 
and woven into the historic record of events so closely 
that you cannot tear ceremony and event apart with- 
out mutilating all. If, however, we accept the inter- 
pretation given in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the law 
of ceremonies had a profound and enduring significance. 
It really, though in a veiled way, embodied the prom- 
ise. For it was the type and symbol of a reality yet 
to come, a shadow cast before of a person and event 
which the centuries following were to reveal. In other 
words, the temple prefigured the incarnate Christ (John 
2:19-21), and the altar with its sacrificial offerings 
shadowed forth the cross, and the sacrifice thereon of 
the Son of God. I do not say that this was definite 
and clear to even the most intelligent worshippers in 
the centuries preceding the coming of our Lord, any 
more than how the promised blessing was to be real- 
ized was definite and clear to ancient believers, but 
such is the teaching of Christ and his apostles and 
those whom the apostles taught; and it illuminates what 
otherwise to us would be useless acts and needless re- 
quirements. They kept alive the sense of sin, the need 
of its atonement, and of a priestly mediator between 
God and man, and thus prepared the way for the gos- 
pel. When that was announced in its fulness and 
completion the types and symbols which prefigured it 
must necessarily pass away. Only the moral law re- 


90 The Biblical Idea of God 


mains, because its foundations lie in the essential na- 
tures of God and man, and its fulfilment on the part of 
man is the end which the gospel seeks. 

Among all lawgivers who have formulated historic 
codes by which nations have been organized, Moses 
stands foremost and alone. ‘Tried by the decisive test 
of time his code, although more than thirty centuries 
have passed away since its enactment, still endures, 
and in its distinctive features still marks and differen- 
tiates a people. The nations made separate from all 
others by the laws of Solon, or Lycurgus, or Ham- 
murabi perished long ago beneath the conquering feet 
of other nationalities which themselves have been de- 
stroyed. Even Rome, which once seemed as enduring 
as her seven hills, lives only in the broken fragments of 
her fallen grandeur and in the legal forms and spirit 
which have been adopted by the peoples who overcame 
her. The maxims of Confucius, it is true, still charac- 
terize the life of China, and millions still adhere to the 
teaching of Buddha. The Koran, by its doctrines and 
precepts, still distinguishes the followers of Moham- 
med. But these have never yet felt the power of those 
destructive forces which have made the Jew an out- 
cast among the peoples of the earth. With no national 
home, no king, no organized government, no temple 
nor altars where his fathers worshipped, scattered 
among all and persecuted by all, the Jew still retains 
his peculiar character, and, so far as his conditions will 
allow, still observes and is marked by the law of Moses. 
He is destined, we believe, at last to give up that dis- 


In the Mosaic Period 91 


tinctive character, yet will still abide by the moral 
elements of the law, but with nobler and more efficient 
motives through his acceptance of the fulfilment of the 
promise in the redemptive work of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. Then the work of Moses for his people 
and for the world will have been completed through 
the full unfolding and acceptance, in a historic person 
and event, of all the elements that are essential in the 
contents of the Biblical idea of God. To that day, 
from the heights of Sinai, across all the intervening 
years, the great lawgiver looked forward with prophetic 
eye and undoubting faith. That it may hasten must 
be the prayer of every one who believes that the Bible 
is the self-revelation of the living God and of his 
eternal purpose and plan. 


IV 
THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 


DURING THE PERIOD OF THE JUDGES AND THE TIMES OF 
ELIJAH AND ELISHA, AND IN THE WRITINGS OF 
THE PROPHETS 


THE Mosaic period may be extended throughout the 
conquest and settlement of the promised land, during 
which the influence of the great lawgiver was pre- 
dominant. It was a period covering but a few years, 
yet most important in determining the future religious 
development of the people of Israel. They always 
looked back to the teaching and work of Moses as giv- 
ing them a true idea of Jehovah their God and also an 
authoritative standard of obedience to him. However 
much they wandered from the paths he had marked 
out, and they often wandered far away, yet because of 
the afflictions they suffered on account of disobedience, 
they returned again and again to a new allegiance and 
thus obtained the blessings it involved. 

It is a remarkable fact that they never worshipped 
Moses as a god. This is true also of their ancestors, 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Other peoples regarded 
the great men of their past as objects of worship and 
built altars to them, but of this form of idolatry the 
Hebrew people were never guilty. They did not even 
regard their ancient heroes as demi-gods and no mythol- 


ogy gathered around them. Their heroes were men 
92 


In the Times of the Judges 93 


who lived in historic conditions clearly set forth in the 
Bible and sustained to-day, through archeology, by the 
records of other people. The idea of God, given them 
by Moses and the ancient fathers, was so exalted, so 
unapproachable, that even when they turned away 
from him and adopted alien gods there is no suggestion 
in their history that with this foreign worship they 
mingled the adoration of those through whom God’s 
revelation of himself had been made known. There 
was, and is, an essential incompatibility between the 
worship of him and that of any man, however great. 

We pass on now to a period covering many centuries. 
Its history is written in the books of Judges, Samuel, 
and Kings, to which may be added Chronicles and 
Ezra and Nehemiah. We cannot consider in detail the 
teaching of each or all of these books. We can only 
turn to the great men of this long period and seek to 
learn what they have taught us concerning the God of 
Israel. It begins with the events following the death 
of Joshua and ends with the return from the Babylo- 
nian captivity. During this period there were devel- 
oped two distinctive kinds of religious literature. The 
one consists of the writings of the prophets, which will 
be the main subject of the present lecture; the other, 
to be considered in the next lecture, consists of the 
writings of Israel’s religious poets and the sayings of 
her wise men. 

The times of the judges we pass over with brief con- 
sideration. They may be called, as I have said, the 
critical period of Hebrew history. It was a time of 


94 The Biblical Idea of God 


testing. Was the religion of Moses too high in its 
nature and demands for its acceptance on the part of 
men, and was it finally to prevail, or perish utterly 
from the earth? It seemed sometimes as though the 
latter was to be its fate. Failing to destroy, as they 
were commanded to do, the idolatrous and immoral 
worship of the Canaanites, they were exposed to the 
constant temptation to accept the gods and practise 
the iniquities of the religion of the land, a temptation 
to which again and again they yielded. The book of 
Judges records a long series of apostasies, of penalties, 
of repentances and cries for help, and of deliverances 
by Jehovah. Certain recurring phrases may be said 
to characterize it. These are: “The children of Israel 
forgot Jehovah”; “forsook Jehovah the God of their 
fathers”; “did that which was evil in the sight of Je- 
hovah.” They evidently imply a definite and distinc- 
tive conception of him and a positive standard of what 
he requires. Where shall this conception and this 
standard be found if not in the previous revelation to 
the fathers and in the Sinaitic legislation? This reve- 
lation gives continuity and consistency to the historic 
record, and clearly indicates an essential antagonism 
between the gods of Canaan and the God of Israel. 
The difference is vastly more than that involved in the 
substitution of one tribal god of limited power and 
authority for another. The whole impression of the 
history, when taken in its natural sense, is that the 
God whom they forsook was the one, true, living, and 
universal God, who had made himself known in the 


In the Times of the Judges 95 


promise, in the deliverance from Egypt, in the voice 
heard at Sinai, and in the victories which gave them 
possession of the land. It was this invisible, all-pow- 
erful and essentially moral God, whom no outward ob- 
ject in earth or heaven could represent, whom no 
merely formal modes of worship could satisfy, who de- 
manded faith and sincere repentance and the allegiance 
of the heart, and whose grace was shown in forgiveness 
and restoration to his favor—it was such a one whom 
they rejected. 

The book of Judges, therefore, is not a history of 
merely petty wars and obscure leaders, of a struggle 
between the religions of unimportant tribes, but a reve- 
lation, as it claims to be, of the eternal God whose 
world-wide redemptive plan was being slowly wrought 
out and disclosed in the experiences of persons and the 
progress of events. The men who were leaders in this 
movement, however limited their vision and whatever 
their faults of character, were the instruments of Jeho- 
vah, and were accomplishing a work larger and more 
enduring than they themselves knew. In the great 
war song of Deborah and Barak, celebrating the defeat 
of Jabin and Sisera, is disclosed this consciousness of 
a divine mission, and a recognition of the power and 
goodness and righteousness of the God of Israel. It 
was a song of praise to him who caused Sinai to trem- 
ble at his presence, the stars of heaven to fight in their 
behalf, the waters of Kishon to overwhelm their ene- 
mies, and the righteous acts of whose rule in Israel the 
people were to rehearse. They rejoiced over the down- 


96 The Biblical Idea of God 


fall of their foes as enemies of Jehovah, for the song 
ends with these words: “So let all thine enemies per- 
ish, O Jehovah, but let them that love him be as the 
sun when he goeth forth in his might” (Judges 5: 31). 
It is this conviction, that they are fighting the battles 
of Jehovah, which lifts them above the low level of 
private revenge and a merely national hatred, and in- 
vests their actions with the splendor of a patriotism as 
broad as the earth and inclusive of mankind. I do not 
say that of this they themselves were conscious. They 
had the limitations of their day. But they were con- 
scious that their cause was one of religious and moral 
welfare for themselves and doubtless also for others. 
In this consciousness lay the expanding germ, as we, 
standing where we do and looking backward, can see, 
of a development whose course and completion the 
slow-moving centuries would alone disclose. Of that 
development they were a part, and they helped to carry 
it on through many conflicts by holding up, within 
their narrow sphere and during their brief lives, the 
torch of a divine revelation, in whose increasing light 
is involved the welfare of the world. 

The last of the judges was Samuel. He has also 
been called the first of the prophets. This is not 
strictly true, for Moses exercised the prophetic office 
and Abraham was called a prophet. But what is a 
prophet and how did this class of men arise who were 
so influential in the national and religious life of Israel ? 
Some scholars hold that in the earliest times the prophet 
was like the whirling dervishes of to-day, a “mad fel- 


In the Prophets 97 


low,” as the officers of Jehu called the messenger of 
Elisha who came to anoint him king, one whose uncon- 
trolled emotions overcame and swayed his judgment 
and whose garb and actions awakened the awe of the 
ignorant and the contempt of the wise. From such the 
prophets of Israel and Judah are said to have been de- 
veloped. But this view is held by those who deny 
any supernatural source to Hebrew prophecy and is 
not sustained by a study, without preconceptions, 
of the words and works of the prophets themselves. 
There is nothing saner than their teachings nor more 
expressive of a lofty wisdom than what they sought to 
accomplish. Milton in his oft-quoted lines speaks of 
them: 


“As men divinely taught, and better teaching 
The solid rules of civil government, 
In their majestic, unaffected style, 
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.” 
(‘Paradise Regained,” book 4, lines 357-360.) 


Among those who accept the supernatural origin of 
prophecy, the general conception seems to be that to 
prophesy is merely to predict. But while prediction 
was certainly a part of the prophet’s function it was 
far from being the whole and not infrequently com- 
prised but a small portion of it. The prophet, as has 
been aptly said, was not so much a fore-teller as a 
forth-teller. He was a teacher in whom, as the author 
of Hebrews says, God spake unto the fathers. You 
may deny the truth, even the possibility of the truth of 


98 The Brblical Idea of God 


this claim, but you cannot deny that the prophets 
themselves made it. “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, 
O earth; for Jehovah hath spoken” are the opening 
words of the prophecy of Isaiah. Amos the herdsman 
said to the proud priest of Bethel: “Jehovah took me 
from following the flock and Jehovah said unto me, Go 
prophesy unto my people Israel” (Amos 7:15). Again 
and again he repeats the phrase, “Thus saith Jehovah.” 
In this Amos and Isaiah voice the insistent claims of all 
the prophets from Samuel to Malachi. 

The scope of their teaching, therefore, is as wide as 
Jehovah’s rule of the earth, and its truths are essen- 
tially expressive of his character. As Plato said of the 
philosopher, past and present and future lay open before 
them, and their high mission was to announce Jehovah’s 
nature, enforce his law, condemn the people’s sins and 
recall them to obedience and worship. This was the 
work of Samuel. It was a time of wide departure from 
the high ideals of the Mosaic legislation. ‘The priests 
were immoral, at least so were the sons of Eli, and per- 
haps there were, as there certainly were later, prophets 
who testified falsely. The lofty moral character of 
Samuel’s teaching is shown in his rebuke of Saul: “Hath 
Jehovah as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacri- 
fices, as in obeying the voice of Jehovah? Behold, to 
obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the 
fat of rams” (Sam. 15: 22). 

It may be objected that this refers to Saul’s failure 
to destroy the Amalekites, and that the command to 
destroy them simply shows that the conception of the 


In the Prophets 99 


divine character was but part of the barbarism of the 
day. But we must remember that the will of God is 
the supreme source of all authority, and also that a 
radical distinction between the religion of Israel and 
that of the inhabitants of Canaan was a moral distinc- 
tion, and that it was because of their iniquities that 
they were to be destroyed. It is true that the surgery 
was severe, but where moral issues are involved severity 
is both just and kind. 

In studying the prophets it is necessary to consider 
the times in which they lived. Without this their mes- 
sage cannot altogether be understood. The ordinary 
reader of the Bible, however, seems to pay little, if any, 
attention to the historic conditions. But the great 
teachers of Israel spoke directly to the men of their 
own day. They were not “housed in a dream, at dis- 
tance from their kind,” but were men of affairs, dealing 
with actual and present realities. They were, indeed, 
idealists; they saw visions and heard voices which it 
were well if our leaders of thought and action to-day 
could see and hear. But their visions and revelations, 
however much beyond the ideals and practices of the 
men of their own day, were never visionary and imprac- 
tical. Of Isaiah it has been said that while his head 
was in the clouds, his feet were upon the earth. It 
would be better to say that his head was above the 
clouds, for he had a nobler and broader outlook than 
his fellow men, and the clouds did not prevent his 
seeing what was taking place immediately about his 
feet. The picture of a future world-wide peace, which 


100 The Boblical Idea of God 


at the beginning of the second chapter he presents in 
language of unsurpassed eloquence and power, which 
was repeated by his younger contemporary Micah, and 
which, in that time of universal war, must have seemed 
to all, as it seems to many still, to be an iridescent 
dream, is followed by a contrasting picture of the 
actual idolatries and iniquities of his own day. And 
the truth which lay in the background of these pic- 
tures, and which gave reality to the ideal and made 
the actual its essential contradiction, was the truth con- 
cerning the nature and character of Jehovah. “The 
mountain of Jehovah’s house,” he says, “shall be estab- 
lished on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted 
above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it ’”’—and 
they shall say: “He will teach us of his ways, and we 
will walk in his paths, for out of Zion shall go forth 
the law and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.” 
This promised day has not yet come. War with its 
terrors and destructions and violations of the divine 
will still exists. But in the multiplying voices raised 
against it, in the growing hatred of its evils, in the 
deepening horror of its desolations, in the widening 
movement toward a league of nations, which shall seek 
to fulfil the prophet’s vision, we can see the brighten- 
ing heralds of its dawn and the assurance of its final 
realization. 

We are accustomed to divide the prophets into the 
major and the minor. ‘This does not mean the greater 
and the lesser. The division is not qualitative but 
quantitative, determined by the length of their writ- 


In the Prophets 101 


ings. It is the one found in our English Bibles. An- 
other division is into the writing and non-writing 
prophets. ‘The best division is based upon the succes- 
sion of the times in which they prophesied. This, as 
regards the most of them, is indicated by the historical 
books and the general character of their prophecies, 
and also more especially by the opening words of the 
most of them. Although they appeared throughout 
nearly the entire Hebrew history, their main work was 
during the period of the kings. The most prominent 
of those times were Elijah and Elisha, and of these two 
Elijah is by far the more striking and impressive. He 
appears upon the scene with dramatic suddenness. His 
garb is distinctive of his person. His bearing is rugged, 
stern, authoritative, and of imperious power. He is a 
prophet of judgment rather than of tenderness and 
grace. He represents Jehovah’s justice in the condem- 
nation of religious apostasy and moral evil. Jezebel, 
the wife of Ahab, Israel’s king, had brought in the 
Phoenician idolatry and the iniquities of the licentious 
worship of the Phcenician Baal, and had instituted a 
thorough persecution of the worshippers and prophets 
of Jehovah. Against this attempt to destroy Israel’s 
religion drought and famine are announced by Elijah 
as Jehovah’s weapons. He is forced to flee from the 
wrath of the queen. At the brook Cherith the ravens 
feed him, and later at Zarephath he is sustained by the 
widow’s unwasting jar of meal and cruse of oil. When 
at last he reappears there occurs that impressive scene 
on Mount Carmel, told with dramatic power, when he 


102 The Biblical Idea of God 


calls upon the people to decide between Baal and Jeho- 
vah. The priests of Baal surround their altar and cut 
themselves with knives and cry aloud upon their god. 
Elijah with biting irony mocks their ineffectual prayers. 
Then at his appeal the fire falls from heaven and con- 
sumes the sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones of 
the altar, and the water in the trench about the altar, 
and the people exclaim: “Jehovah, he is God, Jehovah, 
he is God.” 

Then follows the prophet’s flight to Horeb, where 
God appears not in the wind which rent the moun- 
tains and the rocks, nor in the earthquake, nor in the 
fire, but in the still small voice, or, as the Hebrew 1s 
more literally and poetically rendered, a sound of gen- 
tle stillness, and Elijah is bidden to return and complete 
his work. Once again he appears before Ahab. It is 
to denounce judgment upon the king and queen for 
the murder of Naboth and the ruthless taking of his 
vineyard. The prophet is not awed into silence by 
royal power, but has the boldness of a divine messenger. 

But Elijah, however stern and relentless he may ap- 
pear, is not merely a prophet of retribution. Let us 
not forget that to destroy evil is oftentimes the highest 
kind of mercy. Such men, by overcoming the destruc- 
tive forces of immorality and unbelief, prepare the way 
for the noblest growths of righteousness and truth. 
Love and justice are not contradictory and mutually 
exclusive terms, for love without justice would be 
moral weakness and would defeat its own ends. In 
this history, therefore, of the severe prophet of wrath 


In the Prophets 103 


it is not difficult to discern the nature and character of 
the God of Israel. He is no merely benevolent deity 
of national limitations and indifferent to the character 
of his people. Nor is it because the Phoenician Baal 
is only another god whom Israel has accepted in the 
place of Jehovah that Elijah contends against him. 
It is because Baal is an zmmoral god, whose worship 
involves a vile licentiousness, and who cannot com- 
mand the lightning and the storm, and because Jeho- 
vah is God alone, whose hand wields nature’s forces 
and whose law demands righteousness and love. Thus 
Elijah carries on the Biblical idea revealed in the work 
of Moses and declares it in word and act when it seems 
about to perish from the earth. In lurid and severe 
splendor it shines ott in contrast with and enhanced 
by the religious and moral darkness of his day. Not 
to see this is to be blinded by a theory which recon- 
structs Hebrew history with violent assumptions and 
an arbitrary hand. 

Elisha, the servant and successor of Elijah, on whom 
Elijah’s mantle and spirit rested, while different in per- 
sonality, yet carries on the work of his master. He 
completes it through Jehu, the ruthless soldier, who 
with the sword exterminates the worshippers of Baal, 
and by the death of Jezebel destroys the source of the 
religious and moral infection which threatened the na- 
tion’s life. The reform, however, was only partial. 
The idolatrous calf-worship remained. Yet in these 
terrible events of war and bloodshed, when thrones 
were overturned and dynasties destroyed, Jehovah was 


104 The Biblical Idea of God 


making himself known in the righteousness of his rule 
among the nations and preparing the way for the 
fuller revelation of his redemptive grace. That this 
was not limited by national lines some events at least 
suggest. It is the God of Israel who heals Naaman the 
Syrian, a stranger and an enemy, and punishes Gehazi, 
the avaricious and lying servant of the prophet, with 
the leprosy from which Naaman was healed. 

Much has been written against the severity of these 
stern prophets of judgment. But to understand them 
and justify their acts we must place ourselves back in 
the times in which they lived. The ruthless deface- 
ment which Cromwell’s soldiers wrought on the 
churches and cathedrals of England seem to some 
travellers of to-day the work of a spirit of barbarism, 
regardless of noble art and beauty. So also Paul’s in- 
dignation against the sculptured marbles which filled 
the streets of Athens may seem uncalled for and the 
expression of a narrow zeal. But in both cases it was 
not a question of art and beauty, but of moral truth 
and religious worship. In judging the men of the past 
it is necessary, if we judge rightly, to understand their 
conditions and the point of view from which they 
acted. 

The earliest of the writing prophets are Joel and 
Obadiah according to some scholars, who place them 
in the latter part of the ninth century B.C. Other 
scholars claim that they are among the latest. The 
decision is a difficult one because the proofs of date 
both external and internal are so slight, If they were 


In the Prophets 105 


the earliest, then Elijah had passed away, and Obadiah, 
who is held to have preceded Joel, was contemporary 
with Elisha during that prophet’s latter years. His 
message is the briefest of all the prophecies, but it 
makes the same high claims and teaches the same 
great truths. It opens with the words, “Thus saith 
the Lord Jehovah,” and thrice in the following verses 
this statement is repeated. Jehovah’s rule is not lim- 
ited in time or place, but is supreme in nature and 
among the nations, and is moral in its character. 
Edom, against whom the prophecy is spoken, God has 
made small and despised among the nations, yet she is 
proud of heart, and for this, though she dwells in the 
clefts of the rocks and her habitation is high, she shall 
be brought down to the ground and her wise men are 
to be destroyed and her mighty men dismayed; for she 
has done violence to her brother Jacob in the day of 
his disaster and rejoiced over the children of Judah in 
the day of their destruction. The universality of Jeho- 
vah’s reign is also indicated by the prophet’s concep- 
tion of the day of Jehovah, “which,” he said, “is near 
upon all the nations.” Thus Obadiah strikes the con- 
stant note of a righteous retribution, yet mingled with 
it and modifying its sterner import, we hear also the 
more inspiring note of a gracious redemption, for “in 
Mount Zion there shall be those that escape, and it 
shall be holy” (verse 17). ‘And saviors shall come up 
on Mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the 
Kingdom shall be Jehovah’s” (verse 21). 

In the opening part of Joel we have that vivid and 


106 The Biblical Idea of God 


detailed picture of the destruction caused by locusts. 
Like all prophets he sees in this the hand of Jehovah, 
for the prophets looked through and beyond what we 
with more limited vision call nature and think of sim- 
ply as a system of fixed and independent physical 
forces. The locusts, “before whom the land is as the 
garden of Eden and behind whom it is a desolate wil- 
derness” are Jehovah’s army, and they come as de- 
struction from the Almighty, yet above the darkness 
and desolation there shine the harbingers of a dawn 
of restoration, for “even now, saith Jehovah, turn ye 
unto me with all your heart and with fasting and with 
weeping and with mourning; and rend your heart and 
not your garments, and turn unto Jehovah your God; 
for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and 


abundant in lovingkindness, and repenteth him of the — 


evil” (2:12, 13). In these words Joel repeats the 
essential part of that wonderful declaration, which 
more than five centuries before God made of himself to 
Moses, when the great lawgiver came down out of the 
clouds of Sinai to find the people worshipping the 
golden calf. The prophet’s monotheism is also dis- 
tinctly stated in the words: “I am Jehovah your God, 
and there is none else” (2:27), and is shown in the 
prediction that God will gather all nations and execute 
judgment upon them (3:2). It is from Joel’s prophecy 
that the Apostle Peter quotes, on the day of Pentecost, 
to explain the gift of tongues, and the preaching of the 
gospel in the languages of the nations. Far-seeing, 
therefore, was the prophet to whom the centuries were 


In the Prophets 107 


but moments in the continuous and growing revela- 
tion of the God of Israel. 

The earliest of the writing prophets of the eighth 
century B.C. was Amos. He had not been born or 
bred, as he tells us, to the prophetic office. He was a 
herdsman and a dresser of sycamore-trees, a native of 
Judah, but Jehovah took him from following the flock 
and said unto him, “Go prophesy unto my people 
Israel,” that is, unto the northern kingdom (7: 14, 15). 
Obeying the divine command he goes to Bethel, a 
principal centre of religious devotion, where one of the 
golden calves was placed, under which form Jehovah 
was idolatrously worshipped, and, standing beside the 
altar, clothed, as we may believe, in his herdsman’s 
garb, utters his prediction of woe and condemnation. 
It stirs the anger of Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, as 
the word of a prophet of Jehovah was wont to do of 
those whose minds were not open to the message; for 
the prophets were no respecters of place or persons, 
and denounced priests and kings alike, if these upheld 
false worships and were violators of the divine law. 

Amos is one of the most eloquent of the Hebrew 
prophets. Though of lowly station, his knowledge of 
the conditions of his day both among his own and other 
peoples is accurate and extensive. His language is 
pure and noble. He knows the national history and 
uses its great events to enforce his teaching. His con- 
ception of Jehovah is the same as that of the inspired 
teachers who had been before him, and is expressed in 
terms of loftiest poetic beauty and power. There can- 


108 The Boblical Idea of God 


not be the slightest doubt of his conviction that he is 
Jehovah’s prophet. “Thus saith Jehovah” and its 
equivalents occur more than forty times in his com- 
paratively brief prophecy. Three striking passages set 
forth his conception of the divine nature and character. 
Calling upon Israel to seek their God and they shall 
live, Amos tells them-that it is “He that formeth the 
mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto 
man what is his thought: that maketh the morning 
darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the 
earth—Jehovah is his name” (4:13). And again: 
“Seek him that maketh Pleiades and Orion, and turneth 
the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the 
day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the 
sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth 
(Jehovah is his name) and bringeth sudden destruction 
upon the strong, so that destruction cometh upon the 
fortress” (5:8, 9). And still again: “For behold the 
Lord Jehovah of hosts—is he that toucheth the land 
and it melteth—he that buildeth his chambers in the 
heavens, and hath founded his vault upon the earth— 
Jehovah is his name” (9: 5, 6). 

Is there anywhere in all religious literature a concep- 
tion of the divine nature more exalted and impressive? 
Jehovah reigns in the natural and the moral worlds, 
omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and yet is not 
too great, nay, because he is so great, regards the least 
infraction of his law. Physical science, with its high 
insistence on the universality and supremacy of law 
goes not beyond the prophet, yet with its exaltation of 


In the Prophets 109 


mere natural force falls far below him, for the prophet’s 
conception is personal, and personality is the real and 
final explanation of the world. Righteousness 1s its 
supreme law, and righteousness is its end and consum- 
mation. This is the message which the prophet had 
learned as he guarded his herds beneath the stars of 
the Judean skies, and this is the message which he 
brings. 

But the lofty monotheism of Amos, while also ethi- 
cal, is not expressed in merely glittering moral generali- 
ties. His code is concerned with the plainest and most 
ordinary sins, and enforces the plainest, most ordinary 
duties. He begins with a series of denunciations of the 
peoples surrounding Israel, expressed in a constantly 
recurring formula, which like a repeated phrase or 
motif in music, gives increasing impressiveness to the 
thought. But Israel and Judah have also sinned and 
are included in the condemnation. Not because they 
are Jehovah’s people can they escape, but just because 
they are must punishment fall also upon them. “You 
only,” Jehovah says, “have I known of all the families 
of the earth; therefore I will visit upon you all your 
iniquities” (3:2). “For you have rejected my law, 
you have not kept my statutes, your lies [that is, your 
false gods] have caused you to err, you have forgotten 
my mercies, when I led you out of Egypt, and destroyed 
before you the inhabitants of this land; and you have 
said to my prophets, ‘prophesy not’” (chap. 2). “For 
they hate him that reproveth in the gate, and abhor 
him that speaketh uprightly” (5:10). This is not the 


110 The Biblical Idea of God 


message of a partial god, who exists only to secure the 
welfare of a special people, but of one whose authority 
and power are universal, and to whom the earth be- 
longs. 

It is not, however, merely national sins that merit 
the prophet’s stern reproof. In passages of vivid and 
minute description he-condemns the luxuries and op- 
pressions of the rich and powerful, they that “lie upon 
beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their 
couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock and the 
calves out of the midst of the stall—that drink wine 
in bowls and anoint themselves with the chief oils, but 
they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph” 
(6:4-6). Those also are denounced that “would 
swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land 
to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that 
we may sell grain? and the sabbath, that we may set 
forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel 
great [that is, giving small measure for a great price], 
and dealing falsely with balances of deceit; that we may 
buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of 
shoes, and sell the refuse of the wheat?” (8: 4-6). This 
sounds very much as if Amos were living in our day 
and speaking to us of present evils. And this is, in- 
deed, the peculiar greatness of these Old Testament 
prophets that while they speak directly to the men of 
their own time they are speaking also to the men of 
all time. For, as the mouthpieces of Jehovah the eter- 
nal God, they deal with necessary and eternal moral 
truths, and regard human conduct solely in their blaz- 


In the Prophets 111 


ing and burning light. The lapse of time makes no 
change in the constitutive elements of moral law. 
Thirty centuries have not modified the Decalogue in 
the least degree, nor lowered the ethical standards of 
the prophets. They are as enduring as are the physi- 
cal laws, which govern the smallest atom and the larg- 
est world, and the consequences of their violation are 
as inevitable as are the consequences of the violation 
of these. For, aside from human enactments, all law, 
physical and moral, in the last analysis, is the expres- 
sion of the abiding will of God. And that will plans 
and purposes throughout the slow-evolving years the 
establishment at last of the reign of righteousness and 
truth. This was the vision of Amos. He saw clearly, 
as all the prophets did, the moral and religious dark- 
ness about him, but he saw also beyond earth’s shadow 
the larger and enduring light, the light (to change 
Wordsworth’s lines by one word): 


“That never was on sea or land, 
The consecration and the prophet’s dream.” 


Therefore, in the conclusion of his prophecy of judg- 
ment and woe, he reminds us of the enduring promise, 
and presents a vivid picture of its fulfilment in the days 
that are to come. The voice, therefore, which spoke 
through Amos is the same divine voice which spoke 
through Abraham and Moses and all the prophets 
which preceded Amos, and will continue to speak until 
prophecy, which is in part, shall be done away with and 


Liz The Biblical Idea of God 


it rises to its highest and final utterance in the word 
and work of the eternal Son. 

The next in the chronological succession of the 
prophets is Hosea, a younger contemporary of Amos. 
He appears to have been a native of the northern 
kingdom, and to have given his message there. The 
first three chapters contain an account of his personal 
experience with an unfaithful wife. Is this account to 
be taken as literal or allegorical? The question has 
divided scholars, some interpreting in one way, some 
in the other. The decision, however, does not espe- 
cially concern us, for it does not affect the prophet’s 
teaching as to Jehovah. In either case his conception 
of the divine nature and character remains the same, 
although if arising out of actual experience its expres- 
sion would have a force and poignancy not otherwise 
to be attained. 

Hosea is, as are all the others, a prophet of judgment, 
but he is also pre-eminently the prophet of love. Clear 
in his intellectual conception of Jehovah, he is at the 
same time intensely emotional. He states unsparingly 
the sins of the people and the inevitable results, but 
there is a tone of profound sorrow; his heart is deeply 
moved by the awful nature of their transgressions and 
the consequences these involve. Israel is the faithless 
wife of whom Jehovah is the husband. He has for- 
given her apostasy, but she returns to it again. Jeho- 
vah’s love, therefore, is redemptive in its nature. It 
would restore and knit anew the broken relationship, 
and do this by love’s essential power. Righteousness 


In the Prophets 113 


and mercy, therefore, are fundamental notes in Hosea’s 
conception of Jehovah. “TI will betroth thee unto me,” 
Jehovah says to the apostate nation, “in righteousness 
and in justice and in lovingkindness and in mercies”’ 
(2:19). And again: “I will have mercy upon her that 
had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them that 
were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall 
say, Thou art my God” (2:23), and yet again: “I will 
heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for mine 
anger is turned away from him” (14:4). 

But this is no new revelation. Hosea, as was Amos, 
is acquainted with the history of his people. He knows 
the story of Jacob (12: 3, 4), the deliverance from Egypt 
(11:1; 12:9; 13:4), the wandering in the wilderness 
(13:5), the sin at Baal-peor (9:10). And he refers to 
these events in that casual way that indicates them to 
have been matters of common knowledge. He also 
uses them with striking effect to enforce his moral and 
religious lessons. 

Hosea’s conception of the character of God is also 
clearly indicated by his attitude toward a merely formal 
worship, as if this could take the place of an upright life. 
Not ritual, however elaborate and impressive, but 
moral obedience is what Jehovah demands. “For I 
desire goodness and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of 
God more than burnt-offerings” (6:6). In this Hosea 
announces a truth characteristic of all the prophets. 
The fatally persistent feeling, not of the Hebrews alone 
but of mankind, seems, however, to be that outward 
observances can atone for inward sins. This is to de- 


114 The Biblical Idea of God 


grade the spiritual nature of religion, to minister nar- 
cotics to conscience, and to conceive of God as indif- 
ferent to his supreme demands. 

Among the prophets of the eighth century B. C. and, 
indeed, among all prophets, Isaiah is the greatest, not, 
however, in the character of his message, but in native 
genius and poetic power. For though God spoke in 
the prophets he did not suppress their distinctive per- 
sonal qualities. The divine truth took upon itself the 
varied forms and colors of human speech and human 
individuality. Thus Amos in his illustrations gives 
evidence of his herdsman’s life and rustic experiences, 
and Isaiah shows familiarity with a royal court and 
the literary culture of his day. 

His prophecies have been subjected to the customary 
critical analysis and have been divided into several 
parts, ascribed to several assumed authors. Beginning 
with the natural and clearly indicated leading division 
into two parts, the first thirty-nine chapters were once 
assigned to the historical Isaiah, and the rest to some 
unknown author, variously designated, of the close of 
the captivity and the restoration. But the determin- 
ing of authorship has not stopped here. There are now 
several more authors assumed to have written the first 
part. The more moderate divisive critics allow only 
one-third of the entire book, counting by chapters, to 
have been written by the genuine Isaiah, while the 
more radical, counting by verses, leave to him a trifle 
more than one-fifth. There are still scholars, however, 
of high standing who accept the whole book as having 


In the Prophets 115 


been written by Isaiah, the son of Amoz, and we may 
leave this conflict of opinion to be settled, as time will 
doubtless settle it, to those whose greatest interest is 
in such formal studies and turn to consider the more 
important question as to what the book teaches con- 
cerning God. 

That the author, or authors, if such there were, was 
a pronounced monotheist, no one doubts. The deities 
of the world outside of Israel are held to be nonentities, 
or no-beings; Israel’s God alone exists. In words of 
biting irony Isaiah describes the idols as senseless and 
devoid of power, formed of wood and silver and gold 
(44:9-17). Man “heweth him down cedars, and 
taketh the holm-tree and the oak,” with part he kindleth 
a fire and warmeth himself, and baketh bread, and 
with part he maketh a god. But Jehovah saith: “To 
whom will ye liken me and make me equal” (46: 5)— 
“the God that created the heavens, that formed the 
earth, that established it and created it not a waste, 
that formed it to be inhabited? Iam Jehovah and there 
is none else” (45:18). And again, contrasting himself 
with graven images, he saith: “Have ye not known, 
have ye not heard, hath it not been told you from the 
beginning, have ye not understood from the founda- 
tions of the earth? It is he that sitteth above the cir- 
cle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as 
grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a cur- 
tain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in; that 
bringeth princes to nothing; that maketh the judges of 
the earth as vanity” (40: 21-23). In such passages of 


116 The Biblical Idea of God 


unsurpassed eloquence, Isaiah declares the majestic 
greatness and glory of Israel’s God, whose sole exist- 
ence is the ultimate ground of the prophet’s faith. 

But equally ultimate and elemental is his conception 
of Jehovah’s character. He is the holy God. This 
conviction is definitely expressed in the sixth chapter, 
which gives an account of the prophet’s call. Isaiah is 
worshipping in the temple and in a vision “saw the 
Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up. Above 
him stood the seraphim . . . and one cried unto another 
and said, Holy, Holy, Holy is Jehovah of hosts, and 
the fulness of the whole earth is his glory.” The vision 
awakens in the prophet the sense of sin. “Woe is me, 
for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean 
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean 
lips.” But his lips are cleansed by a live coal from off 
the altar, and his sin forgiven. Then his apparently 
hopeless mission is given him to a people with ears that 
will not hear, and eyes that will not see, and whose 
heart will be hardened by the message which should 
soften and save. 

The prophecies, spoken throughout a ministry of 
forty years, are arranged not in the time order of their 
deliverance, but in groups determined by a common 
theme. In the first chapter, which is evidently a gen- 
eral introduction to the entire book, appear the leading 
conceptions of the prophet. The breadth and sublimity 
of his outlook are seen in those whom he calls upon to 
listen. It is not merely Judah and Jerusalem, but the 
vaster audience of earth and heaven. “Hear, O heav- 


In the Prophets 117 


ens, and give ear, O earth, for Jehovah hath spoken.” 
Then follows the denunciation of the sin of the people. 
They are rebellious children, Jehovah has nourished 
and brought them up, but they have forsaken him and 
have despised the Holy One of Israel. It is the old 
story, old as the nation’s life, and told again and again 
throughout its historic career. Chosen of God for 
knowledge and service, for righteousness and truth, 
they have turned aside to falsehood and transgression, 
and the irrevocable law of retribution has brought de- 
struction and woe, and a foreign nation is desolating 
their country, burning their cities, devouring their land. 
Jerusalem is besieged and the people are appealing to 
Jehovah for help. They are multiplying the sacrifices, 
thronging the sacred courts of the temple, increasing 
the prayers, but these accomplish nothing. Jehovah 
delights not in burnt offerings or the blood of bullocks 
or of lambs, oblations are vain, incense is an abomina- 
tion. New moons and appointed feasts his soul hat- 
eth, and he will not hear their prayers. It is the same 
essential lesson that Amos and all the prophets taught. 
Ritual will not take the place of righteousness. ‘The 
hands lifted in supplication are full of blood. Jehovah 
cannot accept iniquity and the solemn meeting. 
“Wash you,” he says, “make you clean, put away the 
evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do 
evil, learn to do well, seek justice, relieve the oppressed, 
give judgment for the fatherless, plead for the widow.” 
In all this the character of Jehovah is expressed with 
stern decisiveness, clearness, and power, and shining 


118 The Biblical Idea of God 


through the denunciation of sin Is also seen the element 
of mercy as shown in his care for those who are help- 
less against the oppressions of the powerful and rich. 
The fifth chapter contains an appalling litany of 
woes. ‘Woe to them that join house to house, that 
lay field to field, till there be no room,” words which 
are an evident indication that the evils attendant upon 
trusts and combinations are not new in ourday. “Woe 
unto them that rise up early in the morning that they 
may follow strong drink, that tarry late into the night 
until wine inflame them.” “Woe unto them that draw 
iniquity with cords of falsehood, and sin as it were with 
a cart-rope.” “Woe unto them that call evil good and 
good evil, that put darkness for light and light for 
darkness.” “Woe unto them that are wise in their 
own eyes and prudent in their own sight.” “Woe 
unto them that justify the wicked for a bribe and take 
away the righteousness of the righteous from him.” 
“Therefore Sheol hath enlarged its desire and opened 
its mouth without measure, and their glory and their 
multitude and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth among 
them descend into it.” Could the moral character of 
Jehovah be more impressively declared? When, in 
their religions, other nations ignored the essential an- 
tagonism between righteousness and unrighteousness, 
between truth and falsehood, and ascribed to their 
deities, as did the Greeks, the immoralities of man, the 
prophets of the Old Testament lifted their conception 
of Jehovah far above this low level of debasement, and 
expressed it in terms which will forever awaken the 


In the Prophets 119 


deepest elements in our moral consciousness, and 
strengthen and sustain our noblest aspirations and 
aims. No progressive development of our thought of 
God will ever surpass their teaching or leave its essen- 
tial contents among the outworn and rejected beliefs of 
the world. 

But we have not time, nor is it necessary, to quote 
further passages which express Isaiah’s majestic con- 
ception of Jehovah. He is, as he has been often called, 
the evangelical prophet. He proclaims with a larger 
vision and an increasing emphasis the distinctive Bibli- 
cal idea of redemption. And this idea takes, in his 
teaching, a more personal form. The promised bless- 
ing is to be realized in a clearly defined personal Mes- 
siah. Moses had spoken of a prophet like unto himself 
whom God was to raise up (Deut. 18:15-18), but 
Isaiah varies and enlarges this prediction. He beholds 
a king who shall reign in righteousness (32:1); he 
speaks of a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, upon whom 
the spirit of Jehovah shall rest (11:1, 2); and in his 
prophecy is that more marvellous prediction, which 
Handel has combined with music of unsurpassed sub- 
limity: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is 
given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, 
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, 
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”’ 
(9:6). 

In the fifty-third chapter this personal Redeemer is 
set forth as accomplishing his work through suffering. 
He is the divine sacrifice for the world’s sin and so for 


120 The Biblical Idea of God 


the world’s redemption. “He was wounded for our 
transgressions . . . and by his stripes we are healed.” 
Thus across the intervening space of seven centuries 
Isaiah saw the cross and its dying victim lifted up upon 
the mount of Calvary. This clear vision of a personal 
Messiah, other and later prophets were to see. Micah, 
the younger contemporary of Isaiah, uttered the pre- 
diction which by the priests and scribes was quoted to 
Herod: “But thou, Beth-lehem Ephrathah, . . . out of 
thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler 
in Israel, whose goings forth are from old, from ever- 
lasting 4{522)s 

I have dwelt thus at length upon the prophets of the 
eighth century B.C. because in them is disclosed in 
greater fulness than at any time between them and the 
earlier Mosaic age and the later Christian era the na- 
ture and character of God. They repeat and enlarge 
and enforce the ideas of that earlier age, and contain 
all that is essential in the prophets who followed them. 
Nahum, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk applied these con- 
ceptions to the conditions and peoples of their day; 
Jeremiah, whose work continued throughout the clos- 
ing years of Judah’s national life, who while distinctly 
foretelling the final fall, a fall determined by Judah’s 
sins and Jehovah’s righteousness, yet foretold, also, 
above and beyond the darkness and desolation of the 
Babylonian captivity, the brightness of a better day, 
when Jehovah would establish a new covenant, when 
he would write his law upon the heart, when all should 
know him from the least unto the greatest, and when 


In the Prophets 121 


he would forgive iniquity and remember sin no more 
(31.283), 

This, also, is the burden of Ezekiel, the prophet of 
the exile, who while still a prophet of judgment as the 
others were, and thus in flaming language emphasizing 
the righteousness of Jehovah and the supremacy of the 
moral law, yet predicts, as they also did, the future 
restoration. It is in his book that we find the ever- 
memorable words: “As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, 
I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that 
the wicked turn from his way and live” (83:11). Once 
more let me point out that such a statement alone 
makes impossible the opinion that the God of the Old 
Testament is merely a capricious God of severity and 
retribution. 

It has been said that the prophets of Israel and Judah 
are a terra incognita, an unknown land, a statement far 
too true of even many believers in the Bible. They 
are read with reference merely to the narrow experi- 
ences of individuals and not with reference to the larger 
interests of mankind. But among the wise men of the 
past there are no greater teachers. They state with 
unequalled clearness and force those elemental truths 
which should determine the thought and guide the 
action of both individuals and nations. Especially do 
they teach with an eloquence and power, which the 
religious literature of no other ancient people has ap- 
proached, that deepest and most universal of all truths, 
the nature and character of God. It has become a 
disputed question in these latter days whether this 


122 The Biblical Idea of God 


truth, namely, that there is but one God, and that 
his supreme law is moral, originated with the prophets 
of the eighth century B.C. and arose from their own 
reflection. Speculation cannot settle it, nor arbitrary 
affirmation offer a solution. But the answer of the 
Bible is positive and clear. Unless we radically change 
the history so as to make it quite different from what 
the Bible gives, ethical monotheism had its beginnings 
in a far-distant past. It was no new belief when Amos 
prophesied beside the altar at Bethel, and Isaiah con- 
demned the plans and purposes of Judea’s priests and 
king. Their insistent claim, as we have seen, is that 
they are the mouthpieces of Jehovah. It is no less their 
insistent claim that they are voices in a continuous 
revelation. They constantly appeal to a divinely 
guided historic past, in the events of which Jehovah 
has disclosed himself. There is not the slightest shred 
of evidence that they are conscious of a new truth con- 
cerning him. There is no proof that they know that 
they are lifting the conception of a merely tribal God 
into the conception of one who is limitless in power, 
unapproachable in holiness, merciful and gracious in 
plan and purpose. They look upon themselves not as 
innovators but as reformers. Their mission is to recall 
the people to the worship and service of the God of 
the fathers, the God of the promise, who had revealed 
himself to Abraham (Isaiah 29 : 22) (Micah 7: 20), who 
had delivered them from Egypt (Micah 6:4) (Amos 
2:10), who had declared his law at Sinai, who had 
sent his servants, the prophets, daily rising up and 


In the Prophets 123 


sending them (Amos 2:11; also Jer. 7:25). The con- 
tention, therefore, that ethical monotheism, as it is 
called, began with them, has no basis in fact and is 
quite contrary to the evident consciousness of the 
prophets themselves. 

It were well if the Christian church, and especially 
its ministry, should, with a more thorough study and 
deeper reverence, turn back to these great prophetic 
teachers of the past. They are the ones to whom our 
Lord so frequently refers as heralds of himself, and on 
them and the fulfilment of their predictions the apos- 
tles built their message of salvation. In times when 
men were wandering in the darkness of religious apos- 
tasy and moral degradation, they saw far off the light, 
“the light of the knowledge cf the glory of God in 
the face of Jesus Christ.” To attain the height and 
breadth of their vision, to be quickened by their faith 
and spirit, is to possess a power which shall make the 
pulpit once more a place where men shall speak with 
authority, and whose words shall have power to re- 
create the world. 


V 
THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 


IN THE PSALMS, JOB, AND ECCLESIASTES 


THE Jews divided the Old Testament into the law, 
the prophets, and the hagiographa, or sacred writings. 
This division is found in the New Testament (Luke 
24:44). The last portion was sometimes called the 
Psalms, because they are the principal part of it. The 
law comprised the Pentateuch or first five books, called 
the books of Moses, because their authorship was 
ascribed to him. The prophets included not only those 
whom we especially designate as such, but also Joshua, 
Judges, Samuel, and Kings. We now speak of these 
as historical books, but the Jews called them the for- 
mer prophets, doubtless because they were written by 
prophetic men and from a prophetic point of view; 
that is, tracing in the recorded events the unfolding 
process of a divine revelation. 

The sacred writings comprised the Psalms, Job, 
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lam- 
entations, Esther, Daniel, Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehe- 
miah, a varied group, part historical and part poetic, 
and were the last received into the sacred canon. 

It is not necessary, nor is it possible in these lectures, 
to treat of all these writings, nor to arrange them all 
in chronological order. Some cannot with any assur- 


ance be located in time; and concerning the dates of 
124 


In the Psalms 125 


most, if not of all, there is much disputing among 
scholars. The most radical view is that they belong, 
mainly at least, to the period during and following the 
exile, while conservative scholars, although not accept- 
ing in every case the traditional authorship, as stated 
in the titles of the Psalms, yet are unwilling to reject 
altogether a tradition that has come down from a re- 
mote past and against which no external, or manu- 
script, authority has thus far been adduced. That 
there are Psalms, such as the 102d and 137th, which 
belong to the time of the exile is clearly evident from 
their contents, but that there are none in which David 
poured out his heart in prayer and praise is difficult to 
believe. To ascribe all these religious lyrics to the 
times during or after the exile seems to me very much 
like ascribing the Elizabethan drama to the more arti- 
ficial times of Queen Anne. 

However, as I have already said, into these critical 
discussions we do not specifically enter. Our interest 
is in the more essential and important question as to 
what these great religious poems teach concerning God, 
not as to when and by whom they were written. 
Questions of chronology are sometimes of decisive im- 
portance; for instance, questions regarding the records 
of historic persons and events. But in our present 
quest their importance is not so great. In general, we 
may consider the Biblical conception of God without 
particular consideration of the age and authorship of 
the books in which it is expressed. Its development 
may on the whole be traced without having regard to 


126 The Biblical Idea of God 


the distinctly successive stages of every part of that 
development. Thus, the Psalms of David preceded 
the writings of the prophets, but we shall find in them 
the same essential religious ideas which we have found 
in the prophets, as also in the earlier periods we have 
considered. ‘They are, however, presented, more per- 
sonally, more vividly, and with greater variety of form 
and emphasis. They are not theological treatises pre- 
senting truth or speculation in philosophic statement, 
but intensely vital expressions of personal experience. 
Indeed, the Bible is not a system of theology, neither 
as a whole nor in any of its parts, although it has been 
treated as if it were. Had it been it would never have 
captured and held the interest of men. Its human au- 
thors, especially the authors of the Psalms, were not 
cloistered souls, dwelling apart from human relation- 
ships and sympathies, but men of God and of this 
actual world, who felt God’s presence and power, and 
were familiar with his ways not only in the sanctuary 
but among the nations and in the homes and marts of 
men. It is this characteristic which gives to the 
Psalms, as to all the books of the Bible, a lasting inter- 
est and makes them appeal not merely to the question- 
ing intellect but also to the yearning heart of universal 
man. 

The main if not the exclusive theme of the Psalms is 
the character and ways of God. They are lyric songs 
of devotion, the answer, as has been said, of the human 
heart to the revelation which God has made of himself 
toman. ‘There is nothing just like them, nor equal to 


In the Psalms Tey 


them, in all religious literature. There are, indeed, 
Babylonian and Egyptian psalms which occasionally 
contain noble thoughts and lofty aspirations. But 
these are like grains of wheat in masses of chaff and 
refuse. They are debased by the polytheism and low 
conceptions of their authors, and are mingled with 
magical incantations and an agonizing sense of merely 
ritualistic transgressions. But the Hebrew Psalms rest 
on the abiding conviction of the real existence of the 
one living and true God, the God of the promise, and 
they voice the deepest emotions of moral penitence 
and joy, of moral worship and adoration, of moral faith 
and hope, of moral assurance and aspiration. The 
hymns, therefore, sung in Babylonian and Egyptian 
temples cannot be compared in thought and feeling, in 
majestic greatness and impassioned fervor, with the 
hymns sung in the temple at Jerusalem. No other re- 
ligious poetry ever has been or could be made the de- 
votional expression of a divine worship in which all 
races, all classes, all conditions can unite. The reason 
for this lies in the conceptions, or rather the convic- 
tions, which these psalmists held concerning God. No 
other beliefs could have awakened, nor can awaken, 
within the human heart such profound and melodious 
response. Destroy these beliefs and the answering 
strings of praise are forever broken. Philosophic agnos- 
ticism has never written a song of adoring wonder to 
the dark void which to it obscures the glory and the 
grace of Israel’s God. Impersonal and resistless force, 
however vast in extent and power, may awaken awe, 


128 The Biblical Idea of God 


but it is awe without trust and love, a terror and not 
a joy. But it is to the one living and personal God 
that the Hebrew psalmists utter their songs of praise. 
He is the sole and supreme object of worship whose 
attributes are not mere subjective conceptions of the 
human mind but objective realities, beyond and be- 
hind, and yet madé manifest in, the forces and forms 
of earth and heaven, in historic events and in the actual 
experiences of living men. 

Thus the psalmists ascribe personality to God and 
their conception is intensely spiritual. No outward 
and visible form can body him forth. Idolatry is ab- 
horrent to them. The second commandment, that 
against graven images, had completely dominated 
their thought of the divine nature. In the 115th 
Psalm, in terms of irony which remind us of Isaiah, 
there is a description of the idols of the nations. 


“They are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. 
They have mouths, but they speak not; 
Hyes have they, but they see not; 
They have ears, but they hear not; 
Noses have they, but they smell not; 
They have hands, but they handle not; 
Feet have they, but they walk not; 
Neither speak they through their throat. 
They that make them shall be like unto them, 
Yea, every one that trusteth in them.” 


But the God of Israel is not like these, a senseless 
image. 


In the Psalms 129 


‘He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? 
He that formed the eye, shall he not see?” (Psalm 94: 9). 


“‘His footsteps are on the deep” (Psalm 77:19). 


“His voice is upon the waters, and in the thunder, a voice 
of power and full of majesty, breaking the cedars of 
Lebanon, cleaving the flames of fire, and causing the 
wilderness to shake” (Psalm 29). 


“The heavens declare the glory of God, 
And the firmament showeth his handiwork, 
Day unto day uttereth speech, 
And night unto night showeth knowledge” (Psalm 19:1, 2). 


Yet this vast expanse, radiant with sun and star, 
this constant interchange of light and darkness, are 
silent, inarticulate expressions of Jehovah’s greatness. 
As the Revised Version more accurately translates it: 


‘There is no speech nor language, 
Their voice is not heard.” 


Thus the Hebrew poet celebrated not merely the 
impressive sounds but the more impressive silences of 
nature. It was with the inward eye and ear that he 
regarded it. To him nature was in a certain real sense 
but another name for God, but not in the sense of 
pantheism. God is immanent in nature and yet tran- 
scendent. Instead of losing God in nature and re- 
garding it as the ultimate reality, nature to the psalm- 
ists is not a cause or complexity of causes, but an effect, 
or series of effects, the marvellous and intelligible ex- 
pression of the creative action of a divine intelligence 


130 The Biblical Idea of God 


and will. Among all the manifold forms and forces of 
the world there is a central personal power. Nature 
finds its unity in the living God. Thus with an unfal- 
tering faith the Hebrew religious poets affirm that in- 
terpretation of the material world which the broadest 
scientific observation and the profoundest philosophic 
thought of to-day confirm. 

This fundamental conception is eloquently expressed 
in the 104th Psalm. The unknown author (for the 
Psalm is anonymous) presents no elaborate argument 
for God’s existence, which only the learned few could 
grasp and understand, but appeals directly to the re- 
ligious consciousness, and in vivid poetic terms enu- 
merates those visible and tangible objects that are 
familiar to all, and yet so familiar that to the ordinary 
mind and to the mind entangled in false preconcep- 
tions and fallacious reasonings their deeper meaning is 
often obscured, but to the psalmist are evidences of 
Jehovah’s presence, and awaken in him emotions of 
awe and trust and worship. The light is Jehovah’s 
garment, clouds his chariot, winds his messengers, 
flames of fire his ministers. He laid the foundations of 
the earth that it should not be moved forever, he cov- 
ered it with the deep as with a vesture. At his com- 
mand the mountains rose, the valleys sank down. He 
set a bound for the waters and they turn not again to 
cover the earth. He sendeth forth springs into the 
valleys where the wild asses quench their thirst. By 
them the birds of the heavens have their habitations. 
He causeth grass to grow for the cattle and herb for 


In the Psalms 131 


the service of man. He hath planted the cedars of 
Lebanon. He openeth his hand and satisfieth with 
good every living thing. Thus contemplating the earth 
and its inhabitants the psalmist exclaims: 


“O Jehovah, how manifold are thy works! 
In wisdom hast thou made them all. The earth is full of 
thy riches.” 


There are also other psalms in which this devout 
vision of God in nature is eloquently expressed, such 
as the 8th and 18th, the 33d, the 65th, and still others 
in brief passages too numerous to mention. In these 
lyric songs of praise, to use once more the language 
of an eminent minister of the gospel, the Lord of the 
garden is not hidden by the garden of the Lord. If 
those students of nature, whose work is to trace the 
relationship and order of what are called secondary 
causes, could stand with these Hebrew poets on their 
lofty height of vision and see with inward and unsealed 
eye the primal cause revealed in the ever-changing 
panorama of earth and sky, there would be less atheism 
and agnosticism taught in our schools and colleges to- 
day, and more of those deeper truths which are the 
formative and sustaining forces in developing moral 
character and ennobling human life. 

But not in nature only do the Hebrew psalmists see 
the work of the God they worship. The history of 
man in all its involved and oftentimes perplexing 
movements is to them the unfolding by him of an eter- 
nal plan. They are sometimes troubled by its slow 


132 The Biblical Idea of God 


development, they cannot always understand the im- 
mediate trend of its events; God at times seems to hide 
himself and is apparently indifferent to the turmoil 
and evil of the world. Thus in the 10th Psalm the 
author cries out in his distress: 


“Why standest thou afar off, O Jehovah? 
Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?” 


‘Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God, 
And say in his heart, Thou wilt not require it?” 


All his thoughts are, There is no God.” 


We, also, who live in times of larger light and fuller 
revelation, find, like the psalmist, our belief in God’s 
guidance of the world to be sometimes shaken. The 
late war which involved so many nations in its agonies 
and horror led not a few to question that guidance. 
But wars which desolate wide realms and destroy an- 
cient civilizations are no new and strange experience. 
Again and again the earth has been drenched with the 
blood of untold millions. Again and again the ery of 
humanity has gone up to heaven: How long, O Lord, 
how long? | 

But this questioning doubt of the psalmist is a mo- 
mentary mood. It disappears before the deeper and 
more abiding conviction that “Jehovah reigneth, there- 
fore let the world rejoice.’ The divine hand deter- 
mines the direction of events and assures their trium- 
phant issue. The psalmists, therefore, while intensely 
national, do not limit God’s interest and control to their 


————— 


In the Psalms 133 


own people. The historical psalms, such as the 105th 
and 106th, speak of the covenant with Abraham and 
recount the glories of the Mosaic age; and this patriotic 
feeling was natural and right, for to the chosen people 
the promises had been made. Yet, just as to Abraham 
even, Jehovah was “judge of all the earth,” so also to 
the psalmists he is “King over all the earth” (47: 2), 
“whose throne is established of old” (93:2), and this 
universal rule of Jehovah is not merely righteous and 
retributive, but gracious and redemptive, which clearly 
shows that the full significance of the promise to the 
great patriarch had not been obscured by the interven- 
ing years, but remained as a far-flashing beacon-light 
to guide and sustain the faith and hope of Israel’s in- 
spired teachers. The days will come, it is said, when 
“the princes of the peoples are gathered together to 
be the people of the God of Abraham” (47:9), when 
“all Kings shall fall down before him, all nations shall 
serve him” (72: 11),“ when the peoples are gathered to- 
gether and the Kingdoms to serve Jehovah” (102: 22). 
Such expressions are not frequent, but they are not the 
less significant of an enduring conviction that human 
history is the realization of a divine purpose of redemp- 
tion formed in the counsels of eternity, and compre- 
hending every age and all mankind. 

We have already found this sublime conviction in 
the prophets, lighting up the darker clouds of condem- 
nation with which their writings abound, in the predic- 
tions of the Messiah and of a final universal peace such 
as Micah and Isaiah foretold; and it will broaden and 


134 The Biblical Idea of God 


brighten with the years that are to come, until it 
reaches its fulfilment in the advent of the Christ. 

The essential character of this divine purpose and 
plan is also shown in the book of Psalms. It is alto- 
gether moral, and is to work out the moral regenera- 
tion of the human race. Its morality, moreover, as in 
the Decalogue, is rooted in religion, and the religion 
is that in which Jehovah is the one object of worship. 

This recognition and assertion of a moral order, 
established and sustained by Jehovah, vaster than the 
physical order and inclusive of it, is found with especial 
emphasis in the book of Psalms. Open the book any- 
where and you will find it affirmed or implied. The 
first Psalm begins with the words: 


“Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the 
wicked, 
Nor standeth in the way of sinners, 
Nor sitteth in the seat of scoffers, 
But his delight is in the law of Jehovah, 
And in his law doth he meditate day and night.” 


And the Psalm closes with the words: : 


“For Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous, 
But the way of the wicked shall perish.” 


The 37th Psalm is addressed to those who fail to see 
this righteous rule and are troubled because evil is so 
prevalent and apparently predominant. 


“Fret not thyself because of evil doers, 
Neither be thou envious against them that work unright- 
eousness, 


In the Psalms 135 


For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, 
And wither as the green herb.’ 


“For Jehovah loveth justice, 
And forsaketh not his saints, 
They are preserved forever, 
But the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.” 


“Clouds and darkness are round about him,” but 
“righteousness and justice are the foundations of his 
throne” (97: 2). 

This even-handed moral order, whose source and sus- 
taining power, according to the Bible, are in God alone, 
some to-day would dissociate altogether from belief in 
him. They would base moral obedience on the vague 
conceptions of philosophy, or on physical science, or on 
the recognition of the working in human history of an 
invariable though impersonal law, or on the mere sense 
of obligation which conscience gives. But such sources, 
which to some extent are effective, furnish no sufficient 
motive power against the evil appetites and passions 
of mankind; nor can they lift men to the serene heights 
of that nobler morality whose inmost nature is unsel- 
fishness, and whose law is the golden rule. This is al- 
ways and everywhere the experience of the world. 
Among the lowest tribes of savages obedience to their 
limited and imperfect moral laws is secured by the 
sanctions of their religions, however inadequate their 
religious conceptions and worship may be; and it is a 
matter of simple observation that wherever the God of 
the Bible is known and sincerely believed in, there so- 


136 The Biblical Idea of God 


cial evils are overcome and righteousness and truth 
prevail. 

But it is not merely the strict and impartial justice 
of Jehovah that psalmists teach. Were this the sole 
idea of a moral God, we might well exclaim with the 
author of the 130th Psalm: 


“Tf thou, Jehovah, shouldst mark iniquities, 
O Lord, who could stand ?”? 


But he adds immediately: 


‘There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared.” 


Shakespeare, who evidently knew his Bible, has felt 
the force and beauty of this great truth, and restated 
it in his own inimitable way. To Shylock Portia says 
that mercy 


“Ts an attribute to God himself. 
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s 
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this, 
That, in the course of justice, none of us 
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy; 
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy.” 


It is not in its records of war and conquest that the 
deepest convictions of a people are expressed, but in 
its literature, its poetry, especially in its songs of de- 
votion. Let all the creeds that were ever formed, all 
the doctrinal treatises that were ever written, all the 
sermons that were ever preached perish utterly, yet if 
the hymns sung in the Christian church remain you 


In the Psalms 137 


shall find enshrined in them the essential truths of our 
faith. In rhythmic form they voice our religious con- 
victions and sustain our religious life. In the Psalms, 
therefore, we shall find the best and highest expression 
in the Old Testament of Israel’s thought of God. The 
Hebrew word which in the old version is sometimes 
translated mercy and sometimes loving-kindness is in 
the new American Revision always, with but three ex- 
ceptions, translated loving-kindness, and is found one 
hundred and thirteen times in the Psalms, as also fre- 
quently elsewhere. In the 51st Psalm, which is said 
to be David’s penitential hymn and plea for forgiveness 
after his great sin, it is to the loving-kindness and ten- 
der mercies of God that he appeals, and the 32d Psalm 
begins with the words: 


“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, 
Whose sin is covered. 
Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not 
iniquity, 
And in whose spirit there is no guile.” 


The 103d Psalm is a song of joy and blessing to the 
God 


“Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; 
Who healeth all thy diseases; 
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction, 
Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mer- 
cies.’ 


“Jehovah is merciful and gracious, 
Slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness.” 


“For as the heavens are high above the earth, 
So great is his lovingkindness toward them that fear him.” 


138 The Biblical Idea of God 


Can any one read such words and still say that 
Israel’s God was cruel and capricious? Cruelty and 
caprice take no account of moral character or moral 
needs, nor of moral ends in the government of the 
world. They express a passion which seeks only to 
gratify itself. But grace, while clearly recognizing the 
fact and guilt of sin, and never disregarding the claims 
of justice, yet seeks to reclaim the transgressor and 
restore to him the righteousness he has lost. This 
essential harmony of these contrasted but not conflict- 
ing attributes of God is affirmed in the 85th Psalm: 


“Mercy and truth are met together. 
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” 


But it is the attitude of loving-kindness which touches 
most deeply the hearts of these Hebrew poets, and 
awakens in them the thanksgiving uttered in their 
songs of praise. Hence again and again we find such 
statements as: 


“The earth, O Jehovah, is full of thy lovingkindness” 
(119 : 64). . 


“Oh praise Jehovah all ye nations; 
Laud him all ye peoples. 
For his lovingkindness is great toward us; 
And the truth of Jehovah endureth forever” (117). 


Again: 


“All the paths of Jehovah are lovingkindness and truth 
Unto such as keep his covenant and testimonies” (25: 10). 


In the Psalms 139 
The 118th Psalm opens with the words: 


“Oh give thanks unto Jehovah, for he is good, 
For his lovingkindness endureth forever.” 


This last line is four times repeated in the first four 
verses, and the Psalm closes with the verse with which 
it began. 

The 107th Psalm recounts the troubles through which 
men pass, troubles arising from adversaries, from exile, 
from hunger and thirst, from bonds and afflictions, from 
nearness to the gates of death, from storms upon the 
sea, from the evils of wickedness and oppression, yet 
they are called upon to 


“Give thanks unto Jehovah, for he is good, 
For his lovingkindness endureth forever.” 


“He delivered them out of their distresses, 
He led them also by a straight way.” 


Psalm 136, which recounts the signal events of the 
deliverance from Egypt, consists of twenty-six verses, 
each verse referring to a special event, and ending with 
the phrase, 


“For his lovingkindness endureth forever,”’ 


like a continuously recurring musical refrain, which 
only escapes monotony because of the greatness of its 
thought and its fitness to meet the moral needs of men. 

Thus the Psalms abundantly express the two funda- 
mental elements of justice and mercy in the Biblical 


140 The Biblical Idea of God 


idea of God. They express also other elements which, 
combined with these, make up the complete conception 
of his nature. Limitless power is ascribed to him. 
This is involved in the conception of him as the creator 
of earth and heaven, and as controlling all events. It 
is also definitely stated in such passages as: 


“God hath spoken once. 
Twice have I heard this, 
That power belongeth unto God” (62:11). 


‘Be thou exalted, O Jehovah, in thy strength, 
So will we sing and praise thy power” (21: 18). 


‘““Who by thy strength setteth fast the mountains, 
Being girded about with might”’ (65: 6). 


“He ruleth by his might forever” (66: 7). 


The 139th Psalm celebrates the omnipresence and 
omniscience of God, not as an abstract metaphysical 
truth, but as a personal and vital experience, and in 
terms which touch the heart and awaken awe, and 
auicken the love of righteousness and truth. 


“OQ Jehovah, thou hast searched me and known me. 
Thou knowest my downsitting and my uprising: 
Thou understandest my thought afar off. 

Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, 
And art acquainted with all my ways. 

For there is not a word in my tongue, 

But lo, O Jehovah, thou knowest it altogether. 
Thou hast beset me behind and before 

And laid thy hand upon me. 

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, 

It is high, I cannot attain unto it. 

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? 


In the Psalms 141 


Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? 

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: 

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning, 

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 

Even there shall thy hand lead me, 

And thy right hand shall hold me. 

If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, 

Then the night shall be light about me, 

Even the darkness hideth not from thee, 

But the night shineth as the day; 

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.” 


But time fails us to set forth adequately the fulness 
and richness of these Hebrew songs of devotion, and the 
many and varied forms of personal experience in which 
they express their conception of the nature and charac- 
ter of God. Doubtless to the most of us the one whose 
beauty and power awakens the deepest feelings, and 
quickens the tenderest memories, is that one which in 
earliest childhood we learned from our mother’s lips. 
It is the 23d Psalm, and is ascribed to David. The 
imagery is evidently suggested by the remembrance of 
his early life when he cared for his father’s flocks on 
the Judean hills, and when day and night, “with all 
their changeful pageantry,” led to meditation on that 
personal Power whose presence is everywhere, and 
whose care is round about us all. 


“Jehovah is my shepherd, I shall not want. 
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; 
He leadeth me beside the still waters. 
He restoreth my soul; 
He guideth me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” 


142 The Biblical Idea of God 
And the Psalm closes with the words: 


‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of 
my life, 
And I shall dwell in the house of Jehovah forever.” 


No words could more tenderly express trust in God’s 
goodness, and they voice the feelings of the human 
heart to-day as fully as when they were uttered by the 
royal psalmist nearly thirty centuries ago. 

But if these songs of praise teach in such rich and 
varied forms and with such entire trust the mercy 
and loving-kindness of Jehovah, what shall we say of 
the so-called imprecatory Psalms? These are often re- 
ferred to as indicating a spirit of vengeance in the heart 
of the author, and implying the conception of a merci- 
less God. We may frankly confess that they are quite 
unlike the prayer of our Lord when the Roman soldiers 
were nailing him to the cross: “Father forgive them, 
for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). But 
even that prayer implies the recognition of a crime and 
the desert of retribution. Moreover, no one has ever 
condemned sin with more intense terms and with clearer 
conception of its awful nature. Again and again, in 
the 23d chapter of Matthew, he says: “Woe unto you 
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” and ends this series 
of terrible denunciations with the words: “Ye serpents, 
ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye escape the damna- 
tion of hell?” Nothing could be severer than this, and 
nothing is more frequently overlooked in setting forth 
the teaching of the Lord Jesus. 


In the Psalms 143 


But, as regards these Psalms of imprecation (the 35th, 
69th, 94th, 109th, and others), these things should be 
said: First, the self-revelation of God recorded in the 
sacred history has been progressive, a fact sometimes 
forgotten by both friends and foes of the Bible. The 
authors of the Psalms lived at a time in which, while 
more advanced than that of the patriarchal and Mo- 
saic periods, the full and final disclosure of the attri- 
butes of God in their just balance and proportion had 
not yet been made. If, as I have said, we would judge 
men fairly it must be with reference to the knowledge 
and conditions of their day. 

In the second place, the imprecatory Psalms are not 
personal in the sense that they express the vengeful 
feelings of the authors’ arising because of wrongs done 
to themselves. It is against the enemies of Jehovah 
that they utter these severe denunciations. It is for 
the cause of God that they are passionately pleading, 
which is the cause of righteousness. It is upon the 
“workers of iniquity” that they call for retributory 
punishment, upon those who “slay the widow and the 
sojourner and murder the fatherless,”’ and who say, in 
their extreme scepticism: “ Jehovah will not see, neither 
will the God of Jacob consider”’ (94: 4, 6, 7). 

In the third place, the main impression of the Psalms 
as a whole gives to us the conception of God’s mercy 
and loving-kindness. These attributes are mentioned 
and implied far more frequently than the attribute of 
justice which inflicts the penalties due to sin, and they 
awaken constantly the most exalted expressions of 


144 The Brblical Idea of God 


gratitude and praise. The fundamental note of the 
entire body of this religious poetry is given by them, 
and should to some extent modify the harsher tone of 
the imprecatory Psalms. 

In the fourth place, let us remember that justice is 
not mere benevolence nor mercy a weak and sentimen- 
tal emotion which disregards the guilt of sin. Too 
often, in these later days especially, is this lessened 
sense of righteousness shown in seeking relief and par- 
don for those who have violated the most sacred moral 
obligations, the most imperative moral laws that se- 
cure the safety of society, and who show no penitence 
or quickened sense of the evil they have done. Not 
only individuals but also nations, as we see to-day, are 
the objects of this maudlin pity, which would do away 
with the sanctions of righteousness and destroy the 
structural basis on which a moral civilization can alone 
securely rest. 

Lastly, in estimating the character of the impreca- 
tory Psalms we must not forget the essential difference 
between the Occidental and the Oriental mind. The 
Bible is the book of an Oriental people, whose emotions 
are intense and easily aroused, and are expressed in 
terms of extreme vividness and power; and poetry is 
the language of feeling and imagination, and in Eastern 
lands rises to a passionate strain, which to the colder 
Occidental mind may seem far beyond the limits of 
sobriety and truth. This creates one of the difficulties 
we constantly encounter in interpreting the Bible. 
East and West, though both have the common aittri- 


In Job 145 


butes of humanity, cannot always find a common point 
of view in their outlook upon man and God. Kipling 
has voiced this in the lines: 


“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain 
shall meet, 
Till earth and sky stand presently at God’s great Judgement 
seat.” 


Hence, in the study of Oriental literature, especially 
that of the Bible, we should neither ignore nor lessen, 
nor, on the other hand, overestimate this racial differ- 
ence. 

I have spoken of the fact that the psalmists reveal 
sometimes a deep perplexity and distress when they 
contemplate broadly God’s government of the world. 
Moral evil seems not only prevalent but all-controlling. 
The righteous are afflicted and the wicked triumphant. 
God hides himself in impenetrable mystery, and there 
are those who with insolent scepticism deny his pres- 
ence and power. 

This question is the subject of the book of Job. No 
greater book in Hebrew literature, nor in the literatures 
of other peoples, has ever been written. It belongs 
not to one age, but to all ages, not to one people, but 
to all peoples. Professor Moulton, in his introduction 
to this book in the “ Modern Reader’s Bible,” says that 
doubtless a consensus of literary opinion would pro- 
nounce it the greatest book in the world. Its author is 
unknown. The date is a matter of conjecture. In 
form it is dramatic. The action is not scenic or exter- 


146 The Brblical Idea of God 


nal, but wholly within the minds and hearts of Job and 
his friends. The attempt has been made to place it 
upon the stage, but it does not easily lend itself to such 
presentation. It is a book for the closet and for quiet 
contemplative reading. The thought and emotion ex- 
pressed in the dialogue are what attract and hold 
attention, and the thought is altogether concerning 
God and the emotions are such as this thought awakens. 

In seeking the idea of God set forth in the book of 
Job we must consider it as a whole. Its dramatic char- 
acter demands this. Perhaps no book in the Bible has 
suffered more through neglect of a general considera- 
tion of the author’s purpose. Many a sermon has been 
built on texts taken at random without regard to the 
generic thought. The intention of the author, in part 
at least, was to present and reject a prevalent concep- 
tion of God, and to substitute another more in accor- 
dance with the facts of life. The friends of Job hold the 
prevailing view, viz., that those only suffer who sin, a 
view which the disciples of our Lord evidently held and 
which led them to say, “Who sinned, this man or his 
parents, that he should be born blind?”’—a view also 
which is held still by not a few to-day, and Job, in his 
character and experiences and passionate affirmations 
of integrity and outcries against his misfortunes, is 
used to destroy it. But the purpose is not merely de- 
structive. There is a positive conception of God pre- 
sented. We are not left in final and utter darkness as 
to his nature and character and our right relations to 
him. 


In Job 147 


_ The story in its main outlines is familiar. In the 
prologue Job is represented as a man of great wealth, 
of high position, and of exalted piety. It is upon the 
last that the emphasis is placed. In the opening words, 
descriptive of Job and his conditions, it is affirmed by 
the author. It is twice declared by God in speaking of 
Job to Satan. Job’s wife, who in some respects was 
doubtless the best human authority as to the character 
of Job, asserts it. But Satan, or the adversary, as the 
word is more accurately translated, who may be called 
the district attorney of the universe, whose function is 
to spy out and bring transgressors to trial, suggests a 
doubt. Does Job fear God for naught? Is his piety 
disinterested? “Thou hast blessed the work of his 
hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But 
put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, 
and he will renounce thee to thy face.” Then, with the 
divine permission, the test is made. By four immedi- 
ately successive strokes, flocks and herds and servants 
and children are destroyed. But Job’s piety with- 
stands the test. With sublime submission he exclaims: 
“Jehovah gave and Jehovah hath taken away; blessed 
be the name of Jehovah.” 

Then follows a severer and final test. Job is himself 
stricken. Black leprosy, of all diseases the worst, 
and by man incurable, falls upon him. The piety of 
his wife fails. She bids him renounce God and die. 
But Job replies: “What? Shall we receive good at the 
hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this 
did not Job sin with his lips.” 


148 The Biblical Idea of God 


Then Job’s three friends came “to bemoan him and 
to comfort him” as he sits among the ashes on the 
refuse-heap without the city. Many days and nights 
have passed since affliction fell upon him, days which 
he pathetically describes as “swifter than the weaver’s 
shuttle, and spent without hope” and nights which are 
“full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the 
day.” 

Beside him for seven such days and nights his friends 
sit in silent sympathy, “for they saw that his grief was 
very great.” Then, at last, his long pent-up emotions 
break the silence and burst forth in that awful impre- 
cation in which he curses the day of his birth and the 
night of his conception, and passionately longs for 
death to relieve his misery. The friends are astonished 
and perplexed. They had evidently expected peni- 
tence and a reawakening of faith, instead of this bitter 
arraignment of the providence of God. They had 
come with a theory—a theory which like not a little of 
our scientific philosophy and theology is a false infer- 
ence based on actual facts. Job is an extreme sufferer, 
therefore he must have been a great sinner. Only in 
this way can they explain his afflictions. It is their 
view, the then orthodox view, of the divine government 
of the world; and throughout the entire drama, with 
cold and pitiless insistence, they argue for it as the 
truth. The law is even-handed and exact. Only the 
good prosper; only the evil are afflicted. 

Job, doubtless, once believed this. But now experience 
has shattered his belief. He is conscious of his integ- 


In Job 149 


rity. He will not deny this inward witness. His cause 
is righteous (6: 29). It is his consolation that he “has 
not denied the words of the Holy One” (6:10). And 
yet he is overwhelmed with the extremity of suffering. 
God treats him as if he were a sinner; and mankind, 
sustained and justified, apparently, by this treatment, 
have turned against him. He has become “a byword 
of the people,” children mock his misfortunes, and his 
nearest friends pursue him pitilessly not only with 
veiled implications but at last with open assertions that 
his iniquities have been great (22:5). 

But just this is the cause of Job’s profound and hope- 
less perplexity. As to Hamlet, so to him the world 
seems out of joint; and he is led boldly to question the 
righteousness of the divine government. Why should 
he, a God-fearing man, suffer? Why should he have 
fallen from the height of prosperity and regard to the 
depths of want and woe? 

But it is not himself alone that Job considers. Dur- 
ing these weeks of unrelieved agony his thoughts have 
been quickened, and his observation of the life of man 
has taken a broader scope and his discernment has be- 
come more keen and accurate. He looks out with 
clearer eye upon the world, and he replies to his friends: 


‘“‘Mark me and be astonished, 
And lay your hand upon your mouth. 
Even when I remember I am troubled, 
And horror taketh hold on my flesh. 
Wherefore do the wicked live, 
Become old, yea, wax mighty in power?” (21: 5-7). 


150 The Biblical Idea of God 


Nay, he goes beyond this questioning attitude and 
openly ascribes the cause to God: 


“The tents of robbers prosper, 
And they that provoke God are secure, 
Into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.” (12:6). 


“The earth is given into the hand of the wicked.” 


God “covereth the faces of the judges thereof: 
If it be not he, who then is it?” (9: 24). 


There is no moral discrimination: 


“Tt is all one; therefore I say, 
He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked” (9: 22). 


This is indeed extreme statement and seemed the 
most daring impiety to Job’s friends, as to many of us 
it still may seem. But it is wrung from Job by the loss 
and agonies he personally suffers and by the wider out- 
look on the life of man. Yet as the debate continues 
he rises in some degree from this depth of moral doubt 
into which his experience has plunged him, although at 
times this mood returns. He does not, however, de- 
scend still further, as atheists do, who, denying God’s 
personal existence, and in sullen submission to the 
evils of life, conceive of the power that controls the 
world as irresistible, unconscious force. Job was too 
essentially a monotheist to hold that conception. But 
believing in the living God with a conviction which 
nothing could destroy, he yet failed to find a rule of 
righteousness, and his spirit struggles with this impene- 
trable mystery through the long cycles of the debate. 


In Job 151 


In many brilliant passages he describes the limitless, 
resistless power of this wnmoral God. 


“Who,” he cries out, “hath hardened himself against him 
and prospered ? 

Him that removeth the mountains and they know it not, | 

When he overturneth them in his anger, 

That shaketh the earth out of its place, 

And the pillars thereof tremble: 

That commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, 

And sealeth up the stars; 

That alone stretcheth out the heavens, 

And treadeth upon the waves of the sea; 

That maketh the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades, 

And the chambers of the south, 

That doeth great things past finding out, 

Yea, marvelous things without number. 

Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not; 

He passeth on also, but I perceive him not. 

Behold, he seizeth the prey, who can hinder him? 

Who shall say unto him, what doest thou?” 


Thus Job, in agony of mind and body, is tossed about 
on this wide, wild sea of doubt and despair until the 
whirlwind and the storm break upon them, and out of 
these the divine voice speaks. Then at last Job attains 
quietness of spirit and peace. But it is not the peace 
which comes through understanding. The mystery is 
not resolved. It would have been easy but insufficient 
to have stated the solution of the prologue—that Job’s 
sufferings were the test of his piety. The question had 
become far broader. It now involved God’s entire rule 
in the moral world, and for this a merely intellectual 
answer were not enough. The answer must meet and 


152 The Biblical Idea of God 


still the far profounder emotions of the heart. This 
can only be done, as the Bible everywhere does it, by 
awakening trust—trust in the ever-present, ever-liv- 
ing God. In other words, the true solution for Job 
and also for us, of the moral mysteries of the world, is 
one of faith. We cannot comprehend God. “Clouds 
and darkness,” as the psalmist said, “are round about 
his throne.” Yet, there zs the throne. It is revealed, as 
the divine voice declares, in laying the foundations of 
the earth; in setting bars and doors to the sea, and in 
saying to it: “Hitherto shalt thou come but no further, 
and here shall thy proud waves be stayed’’; in estab- 
lishing the ordinances of the heavens, binding and loos- 
ing the constellations; in a word, in the supreme con- 
trol of all those mighty forces which are at work in the 
inanimate and animate worlds of nature, by which 
wisdom and power are revealed. 

All this, of course, though in terms less eloquent, had 
been said by Job and by his friends. But there is a 
difference. It is now God himself who speaks. He 
does not argue. He does not explain. That would 
have been too human, too undivine. There is the over- 
whelming vision of a supreme personality, and it com- 
pels Job to exclaim: 


“T had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, 
Now mine eye seeth thee.” 


We all understand this difference. The written 
word, the word read, is ineffectual compared with the 
spoken word. ‘There are impressions mysteriously con- 


In Job 153 


veyed by this which suggest elements of character that 
nothing else can give. The voice out of the storm gave 
these impressions, and was prophetic of that living, 
personal voice which was heard in Galilee and Judea 
centuries later, which the Apostle John characterizes 
as the Word—the Word which “became flesh, and dwelt 
among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the 
only begotten from the Father) full of grace and truth” 
(John 1:14). Job had cried out for this face-to-face 
meeting with God (23:3; 18:3). It is the universal cry 
of the human heart, and men have sought in many im- 
perfect ways to answer this elemental cry. Longing for 
a visible, tangible God, they have resorted to idolatry. 
But images of gold and silver and stone graven into 
human form by art and device of man have been in- 
sufficient. Nor have trees, nor mountains, nor the 
varied forms of animal life, nor stars and suns, nor the 
o’erarching heaven itself, all of which men have wor- 
shipped, been adequate to meet this longing. But 
when God himself comes and speaks, even in darkness 
and storm, as he did to Job, we are like children, who 
in the terror of the night hear the voice of the father 
and put forth our hand to feel the reassuring grasp 
which dispels all fear and guides our steps to safety and 
to light. 

The book of Job, therefore, presents to us the con- 
ception of a God who does not merely hide himself, but 
who, while his ways are past finding out,and who dwells 
in the depths of an infinite mystery which no finite 
mind can fathom, speaks directly to man, and reveals 


154 The Biblical Idea of God 


himself as the enduring ground of an unfaltering faith. 
In this faith we can rest secure, even though evils 
throng about us and it seems at times as though truth 
were “forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the 
throne,” yet God stands “within the shadow, keeping 
watch above his own.” 

The book of Job also presents a God who, though he 
may permit men of the truest piety to be tested by 
the severest sufferings and troubled by almost the ex- 
tremity of doubt as to the righteousness of his rule, will 
at last resolve these doubts and restore them to prosper- 
ity and peace. For the book ends, as all ideal construc- 
tions should end, with Job rescued from his afflictions 
and surrounded by blessings greater than he had lost. 

The book also teaches that God regards with greater 
favor sincere and honest doubt than those glib and 
theoretic arguments in his behalf which are regardless 
of the salient facts of life. This was the attitude of 
Job’s friends; or, as he puts it in a question to them: 
“Will ye speak unrighteously for God?” (13:7). 
They uttered many fine truths; but these did not fit the 
case of Job, and were false to those larger facts of ex- 
perience which he saw and declared. Hence, in the 
end Job is commended and his friends condemned 
(42:7). This may seem strange to those who fail to 
grasp the full and tragic significance of this great book; 
who, to use the words of Job, would “show partiality 
to” God, that is, would make religious belief a thing 
of partisanship and not a matter of essential fact and 
truth. Against this attitude the book of Job is a per- 


In Ecclesiastes 155 


petual rebuke. To his friends he was a heretic, per- 
sistent in his obduracy; but he was one of those heretics 
who break the chains of proscription and the hardened 
crust of a merely traditional conservatism, and who 
lead thought into a broader field and a larger freedom. 
Such were Luther and Paul and our Lord himself. 
There remains to be considered one book more of 
this group of sacred writings. We pass over the rest 
because they are not essential to our purpose. It is 
Ecclesiastes. To many it is a strange book, and its 
right to a place in the sacred canon has been questioned. 
Its authorship, and composition, and the time when it 
was written, are subjects of critical controversy. These 
questions, however, we leave to others. Our interest 
is in what the book teaches concerning God. It is evi- 
dently a record of the author’s experience. He begins 
with pronouncing all things “vanity and a striving 
after wind.” ‘This phrase comes again and again, a 
constant and sad refrain. There is a monotonous and 
wearisome sameness in life. At times the author seems 
to be a sceptic, an agnostic, a pessimist, an epicurean. 
He has tested all that men strive for and they bring no 
satisfaction. Hope is elusive, a lasting good is beyond 
our grasp, and death is the end for both man and 
beast. And is this not true if such things as the author 
mentions, knowledge and wealth and power and plea- 
sure, are made the chief aims of life? He has stated 
what every thoughtful mind at last perceives when 
these are made the leading objects of endeavor. There 
must be something more and nobler than these if man 


156 The Biblical Idea of God 


is to realize the end for which he was created. The 
author’s scepticism does not reach to the denial of God’s 
existence. This conviction is too deeply seated to be 
denied or even doubted among all the other doubts 
that trouble him. God is, and he has “set eternity” 
in man’s heart. There are ideas in the human mind 
which reach beyond the narrow scope of the merely 
finite. God also “hath made everything beautiful in 
its time” (3:11). There is, moreover, a moral order. 
“To the man that pleaseth him God giveth wisdom 
and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he giveth 
travail” (2:26). “God will judge the righteous and 
the wicked” (8:17). “It shall be well with them that 
fear God, but it shall not be well with the wicked” 
(8:12, 13). Yet it must be acknowledged that these 
convictions do not always at once completely relieve 
the oppression of spirit under which the author suf- 
fered. They gleam like lights here and there in the 
darkness, now and then obscured by the clouds of 
doubt, but at last shine with a strong and steady radi- 
ance; for he sums up finally the matter in the words: 
“Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is 
the whole duty of man” (12:13). 

The book is helpful as a frank account of an inward 
conflict between truth and error, between the thought 
of God and the seemingly opposed thought of the in- 
explicable mysteries of his providence. Many a pro- 
found mind has passed through this conflict; nay, we 
may say that all, or nearly all, who have looked out 
thoughtfully on the facts of life have had, to some ex- 


-In Ecclesiastes 157 


tent, this disquieting experience. Some, how many we 
know not, have passed through it safely and attained 
a stronger faith, a more radiant hope. Others, whose 
numbers, too, we know not, have lost all faith and 
hope, and have been plunged into the depths of a cyni- 
cal agnosticism, or atheism, and despair. But even 
from these depths not a few have been restored, and in 
the frank records of the experience of travail of such 
souls we often learn the power of that revealed thought 
of God which is found in the Bible and in the Bible 
alone. No other religious literature has declared with 
such fulness, such clearness and force, as we have 
found in the Hebrew prophets and in the Psalms, that 
mercy and loving-kindness whose supreme aim is the 
moral redemption of mankind. It cannot be too often 
repeated that the Bible is not a book of ethics merely. 
It is a history, a history of God’s gracious dealings with 
a people, with all peoples, and of the inward experi- 
ences and outward life of those who have known and 
felt the transforming power in human character of these 
gracious dealings. When this is clearly recognized 
there will be fewer fruitless controversies concerning its 
contents and transmission, and a unity of conviction as 
to its essential nature will prevail, brought about by 
the unifying power of its central yet all-pervading 
thought of the character and purpose of the living 
God. 


VI 
THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 
IN THE TEACHING OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES 


BroLocists in ‘their study of life deal mainly with 
the earliest and simplest forms. So in our study of the 
Biblical idea of God we have begun with primitive con- 
ceptions and have dwelt more at length on their devel- 
opment throughout the Old Testament than will be 
necessary in considering the teaching of Christ and his 
apostles, to which we now have come. We shall find 
nothing essentially new in what they present. To 
them the Old Testament was the word of God. It had 
moulded their minds and determined their convictions 
and characters. They appealed to it as inspired and 
authoritative. They claim that they are fulfilling its 
predictions and declaring and enforcing its distinctive 
truths and duties. 

But their teaching was not mere lifeless repetition. 
In this it was in decided contrast to that of the scribes 
and Pharisees. Truth to and in them was a vital 
power, not a dead formula. It grew, therefore, into 
new and higher and more impressive forms. There was 
increased emphasis upon certain elements which are 
found in the earlier revelation but which received 
through them a larger and clearer statement and ef- 
fected a stronger and deeper conviction. As they 


conceived it, God’s self-revelation was essentially the 
158 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 159 


same in content throughout the preceding ages, but in 
them it reached its culmination. In the claim of 
Christ, as well as in that of his apostles, he himself is 
the last and highest expression of the nature and char- 
acter of God, both in his person and work. Beyond 
him progress is to be found only in the widening accep- 
tance of his mission and person and the increasing in- 
fluence of his character and work. 

It is the fashion in these days of not a few, even 
within the limits of the Christian church, to regard 
our Lord as merely a teacher, and especially as a 
teacher of ethics. His moral code is acknowledged to 
be the loftiest the world has ever known. His miracles 
are doubted or denied, and what he taught concerning 
the exalted nature of his person is rejected and regarded 
as the later conceptions of his apostles and by them 
ascribed to him. 

Certainly the Lord Jesus was a teacher of moral duty. 
The Sermon on the Mount is unsurpassed as a state- 
ment of that. Moreover, as was recognized by those 
who heard him, he taught with authority and not as 
the scribes, whose teaching was legalistic and without 
the force of a living conviction. His method was never 
tentative. He did not speculate. He seldom argued. 
There was no slowly developing process of logical 
reasoning, such as we find in Socrates. He never con- 
fused and troubled his disciples with the dialectic of 
the Greek schools. He spoke from an inward and 
vital conviction of truth directly to the heart of man, 
and the heart responded with an instinctive appre- 


160 The Biblical Idea of God 


ciation and acceptance more controlling than that 
arising from a merely intellectual perception. 

Moreover, unlike the philosophers and theologians, 
he was not systematic in the form and presentation of 
truth. There is no fixed order of arrangement. The 
Sermon on the Mount and some of the discourses in 
the Gospel of John are the nearest approach to this. 
He seized upon occasions as they came, and under the 
most ordinary circumstances and to the humblest per- 
sons taught the profoundest truths. His illustrations 
were taken from familiar scenes, and he made use of 
stories formed from the common experiences of life, 
whose force and beauty all could understand and whose 
inner meaning the earnest seeker after truth could 
clearly apprehend. Hence the common people heard 
him gladly, and men of profound minds also, like John 
and Paul, became his devoted disciples. 

Duty, then, clothed in simplest and most attractive 
forms was a large part of our Lord’s teaching, but it 
was only a part. For, however clearly and attractively 
presented, to be effective duty must be grounded on 
religious truth. Our actions are determined by our 
beliefs, especially by our beliefs concerning God. Fun- 
damental, therefore, in our Lord’s teaching is his con- 
ception of God’s nature and character. This underlies 
and determines and gives effectiveness to his entire 
ethical code. Likeness to God is its supreme aim and 
the highest duty of man. “Ye, therefore,” said he to 
his disciples, “shall be perfect, as your Heavenly Fa- 
ther is perfect”’ (Matt. 5: 48). 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 161 


It is true that to the Greeks Plato had taught the 
supreme duty of likeness to God. But in order to be 
like God we must know God, not indeed exhaustively, 
yet really, though it be in an incomplete degree. 
Of such knowledge Plato confesses ignorance. “How,” 
says he in the “Timeus,” “can we find out the father 
and maker of all this universe? Or, when we have found 
him how shall we be able to speak of him to all men?”’ 
And despairing thus of man’s attainment by himself 
of such knowledge he affirms the need of some one who 
shall reveal God to us in the fulness and majesty of his 
person. Thus in a limited sense, and unconsciously, 
Plato may be said to have been a prophet of the com- 
ing of our Lord. 

It is to be noted that Plato uses the terms “father 
and maker,” but at the same time acknowledges that 
their real and full significance is beyond the reach of 
the unaided mind. It is not strange that he should 
use them, especially the word father, as expressing a 
relationship between man and God, for it is an almost 
if not universal word used in the religions of the world. 
Jupiter means heaven father, and the savages of 
Guiana, as already stated, adore the “Ancient One in 
Skyland, our Maker, our Father, our Great Father” 
(“Making of Religion,” Lang, page 222). But this 
word of relationship may have a purely natural sense. 
In certain primitive religions the god worshipped is 
looked upon as the physical ancestor of the tribe. 
It may mean the national deity. It may also mean 
the creator of mankind. 


162 The Biblical Idea of God 


But what did Christ mean when he taught his dis- 
ciples to say “Our Father’’? The answer can only be 
found in the way he uses the term and in the concep- 
tions he constantly associated with it. It is the word 
most frequently used by him to express his idea of God. 

In the early years of my active ministry I was 
preaching a series ef sermons on the catechism, a duty 
I am constrained to believe much neglected in the pres- 
ent time. When I came to the exposition of the Lord’s 
prayer beginning with “Our Father,” I consulted the 
system of theology of a great teacher who is said to 
have influenced the beliefs of more Presbyterian minis- 
ters than any other teacher of his day. Much to my 
surprise I found no treatment of, nor even reference to, 
God as a Father, nor was it mentioned in a voluminous 
index to the several volumes which contained the sys- 
tem. ‘The word was found in many passages of Scrip- 
ture quoted, but these were used for other ends than to 
set forth and emphasize the Fatherhood of God. Ido 
not doubt that this great teacher believed in God’s 
Fatherhood, but he made it no part of his system. I 
confess that the investigation changed in no slight de- 
gree my regard for the works of systematic theologians 
and turned me more entirely to the theology set forth 
in less scholastic and more vital forms in the sacred 
Scriptures. It is not to be denied that in many ways 
system is of great importance. But it may mar and 
injure the forms and relationships of truth. We not 
infrequently “murder to dissect.” There seems to me 
to be nothing more injurious to our conceptions of the 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 163 


relative values and importance of certain truths than 
those books which break up the natural order of the 
Scriptures and rearrange words and texts under certain 
formule which gratify only the logical understanding. 
Not in this way did the prophets, nor did Christ and 
his apostles, teach. Had they given us a system of 
theology instead of the truth as they have presented it, 
we may safely say that they would have had no wider 
and deeper influence over the lives and characters of 
men than have the dialogues of Plato and the treatises 
of Aristotle. Systems are determined by some central 
and dominating idea, and even if composed of truths, 
yet the truths are shaped and fitted in subordination 
to this idea, just as rocks from a quarry are shaped and 
fitted to conform to the architectural conception of the 
builder. This is the work of what Kant calls the 
Architectonic Reason, and to the reflective mind may 
be useful; but great care must be taken to secure the 
right idea that is to be central and controlling. In the 
ancient astronomy the Ptolemaic system was deter- 
mined by the idea of the earth as central, and this led 
to many errors in tracing the relationships and move- 
ments of the planets; but when Copernicus conceived 
of the sun as central the system was radically changed, 
and the real order and motions of the earth and stars 
were at last understood. 

If, therefore, we are to seek to systematize Christ’s 
teaching, although he himself never presented it in 
systematic form, we must find its centre in God, and 
in that dominating truth concerning God to which all 


164 The Biblical Idea of God 


other truths taught by him are related and subordi- 
nate. ‘To me it seems clearly evident that this is found 
in the word Father. We may, indeed, ourselves draw 
from this word, as has been done, certain conclusions 
which are not found in his thought of God. We may 
infer from it a merely beneficent being, who is some- 
what indifferent to moral standards, lessens in some 
degree moral obligations, ignores the strict requirement 
of moral penalties, and makes happiness rather than 
righteousness the supreme end. But in doing this we 
would fail to grasp Christ’s full conception of God’s 
character and purpose. We would disregard certain 
truths, which although to us they may seem out of 
harmony with the idea of Fatherhood yet evidently did 
not seem so to him. Such, for instance, is his concep- 
tion of God as just in a retributive sense, and not merely 
beneficent, a conception to be considered later. 

If we consult a concordance we shall find that our 
Lord uses the word God one hundred and seventy-two 
times. But the mere use of this word conveys no dis- 
tinctive conception beyond the meaning ordinarily ex- 
pressed by it. Of course, the way in which he uses it, 
the terms he associates with it, will convey distinct im- 
pressions loftier than those which the common mind 
generally receives. But whenever used by him we may, 
perhaps, substitute for God the word Father, without 
changing the significance attached to it. 

In the first three gospels Father is found forty-three 
times, and in John one hundred and ten times in ac- 
counts of our Lord’s teaching not reported by the 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 165 


synoptics. It must have been used many more times 
by him, for it is recorded again and again that he 
taught the people without any statement of what he 
said. But enough of his teaching has been reported 
to convey to us its substance and distinctive char- 
acter. 

What, then, did Christ mean by the word Father? 
And what kind of a relationship did it express and how 
widely extended? Sometimes to his disciples he says 
“Your Father,” and in the prayer he taught them they 
are to say “Our Father.”’ Sometimes it is “Heavenly 
Father,” sometimes “The Father,’ and sometimes 
simply Father. Very often it is “My Father.” In 
John, Father is almost the exclusive word, and with 
the pronoun my, occurs thirty-three times. In the 
first three gospels it is thus used as frequently as the 
Father or your Father. But our Lord never says “our 
Father,” including his disciples with himself, a distinc- 
tion of supreme significance which was evidently recog- 
nized and carefully reported by them. It cannot be 
doubted, therefore, that he was conscious of a special 
relationship to God the Father not shared with him 
by men, and not constituted by moral character, as 
some claim, however perfect that may be. This con- 
sciousness appeared early in his life. In his twelfth 
year, when his parents sought him in Jerusalem, he 
said to them: “How is it that ye sought me? Know 
ye not that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 
2:49). 

But it is not with our Lord’s person and his peculiar 


166 The Biblical Idea of God 


relationship to the Father that we are just now con- 
cerned, but with the person of the Father himself. 

Fundamental in his teaching is his conception of 
God as spirit. To the Samaritan woman whom he 
met at Jacob’s well, and who raised the question whether 
God was rightly worshipped on Mt. Gerizem or in 
Jerusalem, he said: “God is spirit and they that wor- 
ship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4: 24). 
He does not define the term spirit, but assumes that its 
meaning is sufficiently clear. The Samaritans accepted 
the Old Testament, and that, as we have seen, taught 
the spiritual nature of God. Although to them wor- 
ship might be limited to time and place, yet God was 
not so limited. He transcends all existences and pos- 
sesses all the essential spiritual attributes of knowledge, 
affection, and volition, and is the source of truth and 
wisdom and righteousness and grace. 

Spirit, as we have seen, is not a negative term, al- 
though by many it is usually so defined. It is not 
merely wmmaterial being. It has a positive content, 
as was stated in the first lecture. It is within himself, 
in the elemental and necessary deliverances of con- 
sciousness, that man must find the essential nature and 
real significance of spirit. Not in the forms of earth 
and sky, not in tree or mountain, not in beast or bird, 
not in sun or star, not even in the human form itself, 
noble and beautiful as that is, all of which have been 
made objects of worship, but in the mind and its essen- 
tial powers, of whose nature the lowest savage is dimly 
conscious, are we to find the kind of being possessed by 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 167 


spirit. For, made in the divine image, man reflects as 
in a mirror the divine attributes, though in man they 
are limited by finiteness, and, as created, have a begin- 
ning in time. 

It should be noted that in his conversation with this 
woman of Samaria our Lord speaks of God not only as 
spirit, but also as the Father. Did he include the 
Samaritans, so intensely hated by the Jews, among the 
children of God? ‘That he did would clearly seem to 
be sustained by the parable of the good Samaritan. 
If, then, these half-pagan, half-Jewish people, why not 
all mankind? Is God the Father of only a portion of 
our race? Is his redemptive plan and purpose so lim- 
ited that not all have the privilege, nay, even the right, 
a right given and confirmed by himself, to use the 
opening words, “Our Father,” of the prayer Christ 
taught? It is an old question much debated. But 
when we remember the words “God so loved the world,” 
not a part of it, not the best and noblest of it, but all 
of it, this sinful world, “that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not per- 
ish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16), and when we 
read in the first epistle of the beloved disciple that 
Jesus Christ “is the propitiation for our sin; and not for 
ours only, but also for the whole world” (I John 2: 2), 
we must believe, despite all that theological subtlety 
can do to wrest these words from their natural mean- 
ing and narrow their scope and purpose, that the Fa- 
therhood of God is as wide as the creation of beings 
like himself, and also rests on the fact not merely that 


168 The Biblical Idea of God 


he is their creator, but that he has redeemed them by 
the most costly of sacrifices, and would have all men 
accept this redemption which he has made and offers. 

But since God is spirit, and is also, as the author of 
Hebrews says, “the Father of spirits” (Heb. 12:9), he 
is therefore personal. So Christ constantly conceives 
of him. There is no vague, pantheistic idea in his 
teaching. As we have seen, the Hebrew thought of 
God was intensely personal. To the prophets he was 
a supreme moral and beneficent Will, revealing himself 
in both command and promise. This conception of the 
divine nature and character the Lord Jesus expresses 
everywhere, and in all his teaching, by the well-side, on 
the mountain, along the seashore, and in the synagogue 
and the temple. To him the Father was constantly a 
conscious presence and a gracious power. He brings 
men face to face with the living God. The impersonal 
God of Greek and Oriental sages and of some modern 
philosophers, the God of mere being, undefined and all- 
pervasive, regardless of moral distinctions and of man’s 
moral welfare, and neither a hearer nor answerer of 
prayer, may awaken awe and fear, but cannot inspire 
trust nor create affection. Man stands speechless be- 
fore such a conception. Its only effect is the stoicism 
of despair. 

But while the idea of God as spirit and therefore, as 
in the highest sense, a person is both explicit and im- 
plicit in all our Lord’s teaching, and the word Father 
is the distinctive and explanatory word which he uses 
to express his idea, there are certain conceptions con- 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 169 


veyed or suggested by it which he does not fail to set 
forth, and which, like overtones in music, give fulness 
and richness to the fundamental idea. For the term 
Father is a comprehensive term and includes specific 
characteristics and relationships, which only other 
words can distinctly state. 

Thus Christ teaches that God is the creator, that the 
world is not self-evolved but owes its existence to his 
intelligence and power. In predicting the destruction 
of Jerusalem, he said: “Those days shall be tribulation 
such as there hath not been the like from the begin- 
ning of the creation which God created until now” 
(Mark 13:19). The Father’s care also is over all his 
works. “Behold the birds of the heaven, that they 
sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; 
and your heavenly Father feedeth them” (Matt. 6: 26). 
His providence, also, is not merely general but special. 
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny; and not one 
of them shall fall on the ground without your Father” 
(Matt. 10:29). When the seventy returned from their 
mission, in his prayer he addressed God as “Father, 
lord of heaven and earth” (Luke 10:21). To the law- 
yer who asked what is the great commandment, he re- 
plied that God is the supreme object of affection: 
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart 
and with all thy soul and with all thy mind” (Matt. 
22:37). To the tempter he affirms him to be the sole 
object of worship. “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
God and him only shalt thou serve” (Matt. 4:10). 
God, also, is seen in the forces and forms of nature. 


170 The Biblical Idea of God 


His hand clothes the grass of the field and fashions the 
growth and beauty of the lily (Matt. 6: 26-30). To 
the young man who sought to know what he must do 
to inherit eternal life Christ taught that God alone is 
good (Matt. 19:17). This goodness is not confined to 
the righteous only, “for he maketh his sun to rise on 
‘the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just 
and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). To the astonished dis- 
ciples, doubting the possibility of man’s salvation, he 
affirmed that “with God all things are possible” 
(Matt. 19: 26). 

But Christ also taught that justice, the justice that 
inflicts penalty for sin, is a divine attribute. This 
clearly appears in the series of woes pronounced against 
the scribes and Pharisees and lawyers (Matt. 23: 13- 
36; Luke 11: 42-52). It appears also in the parables 
of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19-31), of the rich fool 
(Luke 12 : 16-21), of the unmerciful servant (Matt. 18: 
23-35), of the wicked husbandman (Matt. 21: 33-44). 
In our Lord’s teaching, therefore, sin and suffering are 
linked together as cause and effect, a relationship estab- 
lished and enforced by the justice of God. If the prodi- 
gal son leaves his home, wanders into a far country and 
consumes his inheritance in riotous living, he cannot 
escape the bitter consequences of his acts. Retribu- 
tion in the moral world is as inevitable as any result of 
the violation of a law of nature. 

It is well for us to remember, especially in these days, 
that this truth is as elemental as any other, in Christ’s 
idea of God. He never obscured to himself and others 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 171 


the stern facts of life, but faced them resolutely and 
interpreted them as revelations of God’s character in 
his government of the world. In his conception there 
is a wrath of God against unbelief, and “all ungodli- 
ness and unrighteousness of man” (John 3: 36; Ro- 
mans 1:18). 

But while Fatherhood does not exclude justice, jus- 
tice does not exclude mercy. Justice is the dark back- 
ground against which mercy shines with a greater splen- 
dor. For were there no righteous condemnation there 
would be no occasion for the exercise of Grace. For 
Grace, as it has been well defined, is “favor toward the 
ill-deserving.”’ And the supreme end of justice in God 
is not retribution but restoration. This was the teach- 
ing of Ezekiel. “I have no pleasure in the death of 
him that dieth, saith the Lord Jehovah, wherefore turn 
yourselves and live” (Ezek. 18:32). Micah also said: 
“He delighteth in lovingkindness” (7:18). This was 
also taught by the Apostle Peter, who wrote that God 
did not wish “that any should perish, but that all 
should come to repentance”’ (II Peter 3:9). Itisclearly 
involved in what our Lord states concerning the end of 
his mission. To Nicodemus he said: “For God sent 
not his Son into the world to judge (that is, to con- 
demn) the world, but that the world should be saved 
through him” (John 3:17). To those who murmured 
because he went in to lodge with Zaccheus, whom they 
held to be a sinner, he said: “The Son of man came to 
seek and to save that which was lost”? (Luke 19:10). 
And still again to the people he cried: “I came not to 


172 The Biblical Idea of God 


judge the world, but to save the world” (John 12: 47). 
Such sayings also are not to be understood as express- 
ing merely the purpose of Christ himself, but primarily, 
as he said, the purpose of the Father who sent him. 
Mercy, then, we may rightly say, is, according to 
Christ, the predominant attribute of God and is best 
expressed by the name Father. It is the main element 
in God’s perfection, for in the Sermon on the Mount, 
at the close of the paragraph in which Christ says, 
“Love your enemies and pray for them that persecute 
you, that ye may be sons of your Father who is in 
heaven,” he also says, and it is clear that the conclu- 
sion is closely connected with what precedes, “Ye 
therefore shall be perfect as your Heavenly Father is 
perfect” (Matt. 5:44-48). To be merciful constitutes 
the perfection of the divine character as it does that of 
men. ‘This is also the teaching of the Apostle John, 
when he writes: “If we confess our sins He is faithful 
and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9). To forgive 
and cleanse is elemental in the divine righteousness, 
and its essential aim. Paul, also, teaches the same 
truth when he writes of God as being “just and the jus- 
tifier of him that hath faith in Jesus” (Romans 3: 26). 
But this great truth in Christ’s thought of God is 
found expressed with the greatest clearness and beauty 
in the three parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, 
and the lost boy. With the exception of one, the lost 
sheep, given by Matthew (18: 12-14), we owe these to 
Luke, the Greek companion of Paul. The occasion for 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 173 


them was when “the publicans and sinners were draw- 
ing near unto him to hear him” and both the Pharisees 
and the scribes murmured, saying: “This man receiveth 
sinners and eateth with them” (Luke 15:1, 2). But 
why did they murmur? It was because of thezr thought 
of God. To them his law was merely one of retribu- 
tion, an even-handed justice which gives to each his 
exact due. According to their standard they them- 
selves were righteous and would alone receive reward. 
All others merited perdition, for God hates not merely 
sin but sinners (John 9:31). 

Against this false conception of the character of God 
these parables were spoken. Men are indeed lost in 
sin. Christ clearly teaches that. But they have not 
lost their essential nature. They are still moral crea- 
tures, whose deepest need is the restoration of the char- 
acter they have lost; and the marvellous fact is that 
God is seeking to accomplish this, just as the woman 
seeks the lost coin, the shepherd the lost sheep, and the 
father welcomes with joy the repentant and returning 
prodigal. It is this joy which stands out prominent 
and radiant in these parables, emphasized in each, joy 
in heaven, joy in the presence of the angels of God, 
that is, in the heart of God himself, and which pervades 
the whole household, with the exception of the elder 
brother. Moreover, it is said in the first two parables 
that they seek wntil they find; a statement we should 
not overlook, although by some slight emphasis seems 
to be laid upon it. It is an everlasting mercy that our 
Lord here plainly teaches, a truth long before taught 


174 The Biblical Idea of God 


by a psalmist, although Christ states here no limita- 
tions of time or character. It is simply the lost one 
who is sought. Through all time God our Father has 
been seeking and still seeks to save. 

This, as was once pointed out by President Julius 
Seeley of Amherst College, in a series of lectures to the 
Brahmins and Buddhists of India, is the distinctive 
character of the religion of the Bible and differentiates 
it from all the other religions of the world. They pre- 
sent man as seeking after God, but the Bible presents 
God as seeking after man. This distinction by itself 
should cause a thoughtful mind to pause before reject- 
ing the Bible as God’s revelation of himself. It is a 
truth, however, which men find hard to believe. A 
justice which condemns is easy to understand. A 
righteousness which includes mercy as an essential ele- 
ment seems to involve a contradiction in itself. For 
an awakened conscience knows only the guilt of sin 
and its worthiness of punishment; and unenlightened 
reason finds no escape from that. Fear fills the appre- 
hensive soul, and darkness unrelieved by hope veils 
alike its present and its future. The relentless furies 
of the Greek mythology express this universal convic- 
tion of men to whom the revealed light of the gospel 
has not come. Without this conviction there would be 
no tragedies in this our world. It is the inevitable 
feeling of guilt, with its attendant terrors, that consti- 
tutes the essence of tragedy. The Greek dramatists 
present it in scenes of awful sublimity and power. In 
his greatest tragedies Shakespeare shows his clear and 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 175 


profound knowledge of its effective work within the 
human soul. 


“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from 
my hand?” 


cries out Macbeth after Duncan’s murder; and Lady 
Macbeth in that terrible sleep-walking scene, says: 


All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. 
Here is the smell of the blood still. 


This is the expression of a conscience, agonized by 
the sense of guilt; and aside from revelation man knows 
of no “sweet oblivious antidote” that shall “cleanse 
the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs 
upon the heart.” 

But to accomplish this, to persuade conscience- 
stricken men that there is a grace of God toward even 
the vilest violators of his law, and that righteousness 
and grace are not distinct and conflicting attributes, 
but God’s righteousness is of that nobler kind within 
which grace is included and which makes righteous—to 
persuade men of this was the aim, and has been the 
effect of the ministry of Jesus Christ, and the accep- 
tance of this divinely given truth has ever been the 
initial step of that spiritual work within the soul which 
cleanses and restores. 

Among the many incidents of our Lord’s life which 
show this there is one in which it appears with pathetic 
power and beauty. A proud, self-righteous Pharisee 


176 The Biblical Idea of God 


had invited him to dinner. He was received without 
those ordinary forms of courtesy shown to a guest. 
But a woman who was a sinner came behind him as he 
reclined at meat, and bathed his feet with her tears, 
and kissed them and anointed them with precious 
ointment. The hard Pharisee, untouched by the 
scene, in his thought condemned the woman, because 
she was a sinner—a harlot, doubtless—and condemned 
our Lord also because he did not shrink from her touch 
as from pollution. But Jesus said to her: “Thy faith 
hath saved thee; go in peace”’ (Luke 7: 36-50). Think 
you that the attitude and word of the Lord Jesus was 
without transforming power? Think you that hence- 
forth this woman’s life was not consecrated to all that 
is noblest and best? The Pharisee would have turned 
her back to her vile life on the street, but the Lord 
Jesus turned her feet into the paths of righteousness 
and peace. 

For it is the power of love, love toward the erring 
and the fallen, love whose attitude is grace and whose 
effect is righteousness, love which in securing such re- 
sult sacrifices self—this is the only power which can 
redeem the world; and this is that divine love which 
has been revealed by and in Jesus Christ. John, the 
beloved disciple, who, despite the teaching of some 
modern scholars, we must believe best understood and 
reported his Master’s thought, tells us that love is 
God’s essential nature; “God,” he wrote, “is love” 
(I John 4:8). Of no other attribute is such a state- 
ment made in the sacred Scriptures. It is never said 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 177 


that God is justice. It is, indeed, written that “God 
is spirit” and that “God is light.” But spirit and light 
are not distinct attributes but general characteristics 
of the divine nature. Since, therefore, God zs love, not 
to love would be for God to deny himself; and the most 
wonderful aspect of his love is that it persists, although 
its object is no longer worthy of it. Of such love Paul 
wrote that “it suffereth long and is kind” (I Cor. 13: 4). 
Hosea, the prophet, knew and expressed its enduring 
quality and power in the yearning tenderness with 
which he pursued and sought to restore an erring wife. 
And yet the astonishing fact is that men fail to recog- 
nize and believe in this divine love. Not merely those 
who violate every moral law, but those also who, up- 
right in character and life, are made blind to its beauty 
and insensitive to its power through unbelief. Chris- 
tianity has no harder task than to convince such per- 
sons of its truth. To the chief priests and the elders, 
proud of their righteousness, Christ said: “The publi- 
cans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before 
you” (Matt. 21:31). 

At the root of not a little of the present-day rejection 
of the gospel is the philosophic conception of an emo- 
tionless God. For philosophy, as the expression of 
pure intellect, places little if any stress on feeling. It 
regards this as a mist obscuring the clear perceptions 
of the mind, and this is true if feeling is excessive and 
uncontrolled. But that God is impassive, without emo- 
tion, is not the teaching of the Bible. Love and hate, 
joy and grief, are ascribed to him. This may be dis- 


178 The Boblical Idea of God 


missed as a merely anthropomorphic conception, but, 
if it be not true, then we cannot call him Father, and 
there can be no revelation of himself which shall touch 
the human heart and awaken those profound motive 
forces which determine and give richness and beauty to 
character and life. As a Father he grieves because of 
our transgressions, and rejoices over our return. The 
cold formalist and legalist and the moralist, whose obe- 
dience is to a merely abstract law, cannot understand 
this; but every one who has felt the awful agonies and 
degradation of sin can understand it; and when men 
really believe the message of Christ concerning a God 
who loves, then their delivery from all the evils that 
oppress them has drawn near. 

Love, then, being the central and dominating element 
in the nature of God, in what way and form, we ask, is 
this love expressed? What is its highest manifesta- 
tion? Isitnotinthecross? This is the answer which 
our Lord and his apostles give. “Greater love,” said 
he to his disciples, “hath no man than this, that a man 
lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). “God 
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,” 
are his words to Nicodemus (John 3:16). To the Ro- 
mans Paul wrote: “God commendeth [or showeth or 
proveth, as it may be rendered] his own love toward 
us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for 
us” (Romans 5:8). To the Ephesians, also, he wrote 
that “God, being rich in mercy, for his great love where- 
with he loved us, even when we were dead through 
our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 179 


(Eph. 2:4, 5; see also II Thess. 2:16; Gal. 2: 20). 
And John, who in his three brief epistles uses the word 
forty-six times, wrote: “Herein is love, not that we 
loved God but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be 
the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). 

But there is no need to multiply proofs. It is not 
merely in special texts but in the total impression which 
the gospel makes that this greatest of all truths is de- 
clared. The logic of a system of theology that is based 
upon a conception of God’s nature which makes unre- 
lenting justice the central and all-dominating attribute 
and mercy merely the option of his will may blind one 
to this teaching of the Bible, and such a system may be 
taught in the cloistered classroom of the school, but in 
the world without, where men sin and suffer and need 
to be quickened to faith and hope and love, it is only 
the Biblical truth that can accomplish this. For love 
alone awakens love. No other power in earth or heaven 
can effect this spiritual transformation. Human life 
unilluminated by divine revelation plainly proves this. 
Faith and love are the only forces that unite the family 
and society with bonds that bring no bitterness, and 
create only peace and joy. 

Once more, then, we say that love is the essential 
element in the nature of God, and its supreme expres- 
sion is the cross. It is, as it has been called, “the 
greatest thing in the world,” the last and noblest word 
which God has spoken of himself. Beyond it there is 
no loftier, no completer revelation. It is the sum of 
all divine attributes, the final and most effective of all 


180 The Biblical Idea of God 


divine activities. It is not expressed by word only 
but by historic act. It is not an abstract formula, 
which the intellect alone can grasp, but a concrete 
event occurring in the fulness of time, toward which 
the whole past led and from which the whole future 
springs. Here on Calvary all essential questions find 
an answer. Here all antagonisms cease. Here all dis- 
sonances disappear. Here all difficulties are solved. 
Here justice and mercy, righteousness and grace, meet 
and mingle in enduring harmony to express a love that 
is divine. Love, therefore, is not a distinct attribute, 
but rather an attitude of God in which all attributes 
have been transfigured and into which they have been 
transformed. 

But a severely analytic theology has not been satis- 
fied to rest here in contemplation of this sublime fact. 
It has entered into the profound mystery of the divine 
nature and has sought to show the order and relation- 
ship of the various divine attributes which find expres- 
sion in the cross of Christ. Bitter and intense contro- 
versies have arisen, in which love, the supreme expres- 
sion of the cross, has been forgotten and obscured. The 
theologians of an older school look upon the cross as 
revealing a divine insistence upon penalty which would 
not abate the least and the utmost of its claims. Retri- 
bution to them is a divine necessity, and justice finds 
its satisfaction in the sufferings of Christ. An eminent 
teacher of this school has written: “God must be just 
and may be merciful.”” That he must be just is not to 
be denied; and that the death of Christ was strictly 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 181 


propitiatory is clearly taught in the Scriptures. The 
Old Testament sacrificial system symbolized this, and 
he himself said that he gave his life “a ransom for 
many” (Mark 10: 45), and that his blood was “poured 
out for many unto remission of sins” (Matt. 26: 28). 
Both Paul and John call Christ a propitiatory offering 
for sin. But that satisfaction is found merely or 
mainly in the sufferings of the cross is simply inferen- 
tial, and the Scriptural conception of the character and 
nature of God does not lead to this conclusion. If love 
is the very essence of God, as John wrote, then mercy, 
which is the expression of love, is no more merely op- 
tional than justice is, but is an equally inner and even 
deeper necessity of the divine nature. As the prophet 
Micah wrote: “Who is a God like unto thee who par- 
doneth iniquity, and passeth over the transgression of 
the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his 
anger forever, because he delighteth in lovingkindness” 
(Micah 7:18). If God found satisfaction in the cross, 
was it not rather in the supreme obedience of Christ, 
an obedience which finds its perfect expression in the 
sacrifice of self for the welfare of others? Paul sug- 
gests this in the words, he became “obedient even unto 
death, yea, the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8). 
What God desires and seeks in man is righteousness, in 
its highest and purest form, the righteousness which 
comes from faith and is identical with love, and this 
righteousness he found in the Son of man, the universal 
Man, who alone realized in his life and death what 
man ought to be, and in whom all men are summed up 


182 The Biblical Idea of God 


who trust in him (Eph. 1:10), and in finding this God 
finds his deepest satisfaction. Not suffering, then, as 
meeting merely the claims of retributive justice, but 
suffering endured for man’s salvation, and as expressive 
of a love that shrank from nothing to accomplish this 
great end, this is the meaning of the cross (see John 
3:16, 17). And it is this that makes the gospel that 
proclaims the cross a word of power, of consolation, 
and of hope and joy. ‘Take the cross, as the expression 
and proof of a divine love, out of the Christian message, 
as is so often done, and that message has lost its ele- 
mental force. Not in science, not in philosophy, but 
only in the historic Christ, who lived and died and rose 
again, lie the sources of that redemption which shall 
rescue man from the evils that now oppress him and 
restore him to righteousness, and to that love of moral 
truth and beauty and goodness which is righteousness 
in its noblest form. 

Is it strange, then, that the Christian church, through 
all the centuries and in all the parts into which it has 
been broken, has clung to the cross as the symbol of its 
salvation? Is it strange that in the hymns which voice 
its strongest faith and quicken and express its deepest 
emotions, it should sing the grace and glory of the 
cross? Is it strange that our Lord, in the last hours 
of his earthly life, should institute an ordinance which 
should forever, until his return, keep the cross in our 
remembrance? Is it strange that we should hold it to 
be the central object in the history of the world, and 
its victim the central person? 'To it men have looked 


In the Teaching of Christ and His Apostles 183 


and still will look with eyes in whose depths shine faith 
and hope until there is the fulfilment of our Lord’s 
words: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw all men unto myself” (John 12:32). For the 
cross expresses love in its highest and noblest form and 
in its most effective power. 

One more essential truth in the self-revelation of God 
remains. ‘There is one God and only one, according to 
the Bible. But he has manifested himself in a three- 
fold way as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The nature 
of this triune manifestation awakened and occupied the 
earliest thought of the church, and the Greek fathers 
formulated it in a creed which has never been surpassed. 
The New Testament explicitly teaches the essential 
deity of the Son and of the Spirit; and this was the be- 
lief of the church from its beginning. Christ claimed 
essential oneness with the Father. To the reviling 
Jews he said, “I and the Father are one”’ (John 10: 30), 
one not merely in ethical character, but one in power 
and being; for this is what the Jews understood him to 
mean, as is clearly indicated by their reply: “Thou 
being a man makest thyself God” (John 10:33). 
Hence they accused him of blasphemy. This under- 
standing Jesus did not deny. He also claimed the 
essential attribute of eternity. To the Jews again he 
said: “Before Abraham was [or came to be] I am” 
(John 8:58). In his prayer after the supper he also 
said: “And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own 
self with the glory which I had with thee before the 
world was” (John 17:5). This is also the teaching of 


184 The Biblical Idea of God 


John in the prologue to his gospel. “In the beginning 
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
Word was God” (John 1:1). That he means the per- 
sonal Word, that is, the eternal Son, is shown by the 
later statement: “And the Word became flesh and 
dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory as of the only 
begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth” 
(John 1:14). It was distinctly taught by Paul in his 
letter to the Philippians, where he wrote of Christ 
Jesus as one, “who existing in the form of God, counted 
not the being on an equality with God a thing to be 
grasped”’ (Phil. 2:6); that is, he needed not to seize 
upon “equality with God,” for it was what he already 
from the beginning had. In the beginning of the epis- 
tle to the Hebrews the Son of God is described, in terms 
of profound significance, as “being the effulgence [or 
shining forth] of his [God’s] glory, and the very image 
of his [God’s] substance” (Heb. 1:3). But these pas- 
sages are only a part of the abundant proof that might 
be cited. Beyond them we cannot here and now go. 

The essential deity and distinct personality of the 
Spirit is not stated in the Scriptures with such definite- 
ness and precision as is that of the Son, but is involved 
or implied in passages too many at present to enu- 
merate. The formula for baptism, given by our Lord 
himself, “baptizing them into the name of the Father 
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28: 19), 
clearly teaches the Spirit’s distinct personality and 
power; and this has always been the belief of the 
cburch. 


Renew and Conclusion 185 


The Scriptures, however, do not formulate what is 
called the doctrine of the Trinity, but give only the 
essential data which the church has combined and 
stated in the Nicean Creed. 

We have thus, in this comparatively brief and imper- 
fect way, tried to trace the essential contents and grad- 
ual development of the Biblical idea of God. It is not 
an idea which, as some affirm, is merely an ideal, exist- 
ing only in the human mind, the result of a slowly un- 
folding process of thought brooding upon the nature of 
things and upon man’s own nature and experience 
amid the changes and forces and laws of this visible 
and tangible world, an idea, or ideal, to which there 
corresponds no objective being. If it were merely that 
it would still be the most marvellous work which the 
unaided reason of man has ever accomplished. Noth- 
ing which his philosophy, dreaming of things unseen, 
has produced; nothing which his religions, aspiring after 
a god unknown, have conceived, can compare with it. 
You have only to read the history of human thought 
without the Bible to assure yourselves of that. And if 
it be true that man is unable to pass beyond the limits 
of his own conceptions, then his philosophy, with its 
necessary and universal convictions concerning the na- 
ture and forms of metaphysical being, is but illusion, 
and his religions, based upon an inescapable belief in 
the existence of a person or persons beyond and above 
him, visible only to the inward eye, are but misleading 
mockeries. In vain has he built his altars; in vain has 
he poured upon them the blood of countless victims; in 


186 The Biblical Idea of God 


vain has he offered prayers pleading for help, which, 
sounding out through an echoless abyss, have no an- 
swer; in vain has he clung to a faith that God 2s, and to 
a hope that some time and somehow the answer will be 
given, and that God will reveal himself not only as the 
judge condemning sin but as the Father, loving, mer- 
ciful, forgiving, and restoring man to an abiding fellow- 
ship with himself. The very nature and contents of 
the Biblical idea impress upon us the truth of its objec- 
tive reality. Man is not mocked by hunger, for there 
is food; nor by thirst, for there is drink; nor by the 
yearning after truth, for he finds it in the inner and the 
outer worlds. So the deep, instinctive hunger and 
thirst of the soul for the living God, the inborn and 
deathless desire to know him, and the abiding convic- 
tion that he is, all imply the reality of God. If not, 
then the reason and heart of man are sources of error 
only, and the age-long cry for a truth which neither 
nature nor man can give shall issue in an endless de- 
spair. 

As we look back now over the slow religious develop- 
ment which the Bible records, which began with certain 
essential conceptions, limited in expression, but which 
grew throughout the centuries of revelation until they 
attained the fulness and power of the teaching of our 
Lord and his apostles, we find in this development an 
argument for the truth of the Bible’s claim concerning 
itself; that its historical accounts are a truthful state- 
ment of how and when and through whom the Biblical 
thought of God has been revealed. But we live in an 


Renew and Conclusion 187 


age of doubt and of denial. It is not an age of creative 
thought but of critical investigation. More than ever 
before the sacred Scriptures are subjected to micro- 
scopic criticism. Not the great outstanding features 
but the manifold minutiz are treated with a detail al- 
most exhaustive, and the main facts and truths are 
oftentimes obscured and lost to view. Hence this 
criticism has been called, and rightly called, destruc- 
tive. I do not deny that critical study is important 
and even necessary. ‘There is a criticism that is con- 
servative and constructive. But much of the Biblical 
criticism of to-day rests on unproved assumptions, and 
these assumptions include often a frank denial of the 
possibility of a supernatural revelation. 

Moreover, there is slight regard for the past, as if its 
records were mainly traditional and nearly always 
wrong. Such criticism finds the Biblical account of 
creation, of the temptation and fall, of the flood and 
destruction of life, to be merely mythological, or fanci- 
ful creations of the mind. ‘To it the patriarchs are 
eponymous, or, at the most, legendary characters. The 
exodus from Egypt, with its attendant plagues, never 
occurred; or, if it did, it was in a way different from 
that given in the record. The Mosaic legislation, ex- 
cept to a very limited extent, was not the work of the 
great lawgiver but the product of centuries of gradual 
evolution, and was not completed until the return from 
the captivity. It is true that the Bible presents this 
legislation as so closely and vitally interwoven with 
historic persons and events that they cannot be torn 


188 The Brblical Idea of God 


asunder without mutilation of both. But this does not 
disturb the critical mind intent only on the theoretical 
reconstruction of the past. This reconstruction is 
based on a law of evolution, whose dates and working 
are at best but a matter of conjecture. That there is 
such a law we do not deny. It is to this, as disclosed 
in the history and-thought of the Hebrew people, that 
we appeal. But our conclusions will depend upon the 
period within which we trace its working and the dates 
we assign to its principal epochs. An important as- 
sumption of the radical or destructive criticism is, as 
we have stated in a former lecture, that ethical mono- 
theism began with the prophets of the eighth century 
B.C. Against this assumption the prophets them- 
selves are witnesses. ‘They are conscious of no new 
teaching. They are reformers, not innovators. Their 
God is the God of the fathers, the God of the promise, 
the God of creation and redemption. And this redemp- 
tion is essentially moral. It is first dimly intimated 
after the temptation and fall. The seed of the woman 
shall bruise the serpent’s head. It is bodied forth in 
the history of the flood and the rescue of Noah’s fam- 
ily. It has further and clearer disclosure in the call of 
Abraham, in the legislation of Moses, in the rescue 
work of the judges; and when the prophets throughout 
the period of the kings uttered their burning messages 
of retribution and of hope, this distinctively moral and 
redemptive idea of God was widened and deepened, 
and became more individual in its application to the 
hearts and lives of men. In the New Testament times 


Review and Conclusion 189 


all that was prophetic before reached historic fulfil- 
ment in the person and work of Jesus Christ, beyond 
which lies only the world’s acceptance of him as Sa- 
viour and Lord. The one fundamental and unfolding 
element which underlies and determines this entire his- 
toric process is, I repeat, the divinely given promise of 
redemption. It is the golden key of the sacred Scrip- 
tures. It is the sole adequate explanation of all the 
persons and events which they record. Without it 
there is no law, no order, no beginning, no end. Con- 
fusion unrelieved rests on past and present and future 
alike. 

The question now arises, How can we account for the 
continuity throughout successive ages of this unfolding 
idea of a moral and redemptive God if the books which 
contain it are made up of shreds and patches? For 
such they are if much of modern criticism is accepted. 
The polychrome, or many-colored edition of some of 
the Biblical books, notably that of Judges, in clear and 
definite detail shows this. Each assumed source has a 
distinctive color, and each assumed editor, or redactor, 
is in like manner indicated. This extends even to sin- 
gle connective words. But among so many different 
revisers, belonging to widely different periods, how is 
it that there has resulted such unity of thought and 
continuity of development? There must have been 
one presiding mind determining it all, and that mind, 
as the author of Hebrews tells us, must have been the 
mind of God. ‘This is required to explain the essential 
harmony of the many books which really make up the 


190 The Biblical Idea of God 


Bible. Much more is it required if these books are 
themselves compilations of unknown authors, a bewil- 
dering combination of bits and portions, chosen here 
and there, to compose, as I have said, a patchwork of 
myth and legend, and occasionally, it may be, an ac- 
count to be regarded as historical. 

There are books- which are evidently compilations. 
Such is the book of Proverbs. But critical analysis and 
division has been carried to an extreme, the result of 
which is not infrequently a reckless disregard of the 
saving quality, common sense, and the destruction of 
faith in the Bible as the revelation of the will of God. 
The only rational position, it seems to me, is to accept 
it on its face value for what it claims to be. The only 
rational explanation of its manifold phenomena is that 
which is given by itself, that God speaks in and through 
its words, its persons, its events, and that it contains 
in clear and full expression the true conception of his 
nature, his character, and his eternal purpose concern- 
ing man. It is this thought of God that is the very 
core of the gospel, and in it lies the power by which the 
gospel has won its victories in the past. And if the 
Christian church is to withstand the persistent assaults 
of a critical scepticism and a philosophic unbelief, if it 
is to continue to minister to the deepest moral needs 
of man, to solve the perplexities of his inquiring mind, 
and satisfy the insistent yearning of his heart, if it is 
to continue inwardly to grow and outwardly to extend 
its conquests throughout the world, to overcome error 
and vice and wretchedness and woe, if it is to perfect 


Renew and Conclusion 191 


in the individual the noblest forms of moral and spir- 
itual character, and among nations to destroy war and 
bring the peace which Isaiah prophesied and of which 
the herald angels sang; if, in a word, it is to accomplish, 
whether soon or late, the great mission God has given 
it, then, by its teaching in the school, its preaching in 
the pulpit, and its life in society and the home, it must 
continue to proclaim what God is, his Fatherhood, his 
righteousness, his grace, his love, and these as declared 
in the life that culminated in the sacrifice and resurrec- 
tion of his Son, Jesus Christ, for there is nothing else 
that the world so much needs to know as this Biblical 
idea of God. 





THE BROSS LECTURES 


Tue Bross LecTuRES are an outgrowth of a fund 
established in 1879 by the late William Bross, lieuten- 
ant-governor of Illinois from 1866 to 1870. Desiring 
some memorial of his son, Nathaniel Bross, who died 
in 1856, Mr. Bross entered into an agreement with the 
“Trustees of Lake Forest University,” whereby there 
was finally transferred to them the sum of forty thou- 
sand dollars, the income of which was to accumulate in 
perpetuity for successive periods of ten years, the ac- 
cumulations of one decade to be spent in the following 
decade, for the purpose of stimulating the best books 
or treatises “on the connection, relation, and mutual 
bearing of any practical science, the history of our 
race, or the facts in any department of knowledge, with 
and upon the Christian Religion.” The object of the 
donor was to “call out the best efforts of the highest 
talent and the ripest scholarship of the world to illus- 
trate from science, or from any department of knowl- 
edge, and to demonstrate the divine origin and the 
authority of the Christian Scriptures; and further, to 
show how both science and revelation coincide and 
prove the existence, the providence, or any or all of 
the attributes of the only living and true God, ‘infi- 
nite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, 


power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.’” 
193 


194 The Bross Lectures 


The gift contemplated in the original agreement of 
1879 was finally consummated in 1890. The first dec- 
ade of the accumulation of interest having closed in 
1900, the trustees of the Bross Fund began at this 
time to carry out the provisions of the deed of gift. 
It was determined to give the general title of “The 
Bross Library” to-the series of the books purchased 
and published with the proceeds of the Bross Fund. In 
accordance with the express wish of the donor, that the 
“Evidences of Christianity” of his “very dear friend 
and teacher, Mark Hopkins, D.D.,” be purchased and 
“ever numbered and known as No. 1 of the series,”’ 
the trustees secured the copyright of this work, which 
has been republished in a presentation edition as Vol- 
ume I of the Bross Library. 


The trust agreement prescribed two methods by 
which the production of books and treatises of the 
nature contemplated by the donor was to be stimu- 
lated: 

1. The trustees were empowered to offer one or more 
prizes during each decade, the competition for which 
was to be thrown open to “the scientific men, the 
Christian philosophers and historians of all nations.” 
In accordance with this provision, a prize of $6,000 
was offered in 1902 for the best book fulfilling the con- 
ditions of the deed of the gift, the competing manu- 
scripts to be presented on or before June 1, 1905. The 
prize was awarded to the Reverend James Orr, D.D., 
professor of apologetics and systematic theology in the 


The Bross Lectures 195 


United Free Church College, Glasgow, for his treatise 
on “The Problem of the Old Testament,” which was 
published in 1906 as Volume ITI of the Bross Library. 
The second decennial prize of $6,000 was awarded in 
1915 to the Reverend Thomas James Thorburn, D.D., 
LL.D., Hastings, England, for his book entitled, “'The 
Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels,” which has 
been published as Volume VII of the Bross Library. 
The announcement of the conditions may be obtained 
from the president of Lake Forest College. 

_ 2. The trustees were also empowered to “select and 
designate any particular scientific man or Christian 
philosopher and the subject on which he shall write,” 
and to “agree with him as to the sum he shall receive 
for the book or treatise to be written.” Under this 
provision the trustees have, from time to time, invited 
eminent scholars to deliver courses of lectures before 
Lake Forest College, such courses to be subsequently 
published as volumes in the Bross Library. The first 
course of lectures, on “Obligatory Morality,” was de- 
livered in May, 1903, by the Reverend Francis Landey 
Patton, D.D., LL.D., President of Princeton Theolog- 
ical Seminary. The second course of lectures, on “The 
Bible: Its Origin and Nature,’ was delivered in May, 
1904, by the Reverend Marcus Dods, D.D., Professor 
of Exegetical Theology in New College, Edinburgh. 
These lectures were published in 1905 as Volume II 
of the Bross Library. The third course of lectures, on 
“The Bible of Nature,’ was delivered in September 
and October, 1907, by Mr. J. Arthur Thomson, M.A., 


196 The Bross Lectures 


Regius Professor of Natural History in the University 
of Aberdeen. These lectures were published in 1908 
as Volume IV of the Bross Library. The fourth 
course of lectures, on “The Religions of Modern 
Syria and Palestine,” was delivered in November and 
December, 1908, by Frederick Jones Bliss, Ph.D., of 
Beirut, Syria. These lectures are published as Vol- 
ume V of the Bross Library. The fifth course of 
lectures, on “The Sources of Religious Insight,” was 
delivered November 13 to 19, 1911, by Professor 
Josiah Royce, Ph.D., of Harvard University. These 
lectures are embodied in the sixth volume. Volume 
VII, “The Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels,” 
by the Reverend Thomas James Thorburn, D.D., was 
published in 1915.. The seventh course of lectures, on 
“The Will to Freedom,” was delivered in May, 1915, 
by the Reverend John Neville Figgis, D.D., LL.D., of 
the House of the Resurrection, Mirfield, England, and 
published as Volume VIII of the series. In 1916 Pro- 
fessor Henry Wilkes Wright, of Lake Forest College, 
delivered the next course of lectures on “Faith Justi- 
fied by Progress.” These lectures are embodied in 
Volume IX. In 1921, the Reverend John P. Peters, 
Ph.D., of Sewanee, Tennessee, delivered a course of 
lectures on “Spade and Bible.’ These lectures are 
embodied in Volume X. In November, 1921, the lec- 
tures on “Christianity and Problems of Today,” 
which constitute Volume XI of the Bross Lectures, 
were delivered upon the occasion of the inauguration 
of the President. The present volume is Volume XII, 


The Bross Lectures 197 


entitled, “The Biblical Idea of God,’ by M. Bross 
Thomas, D.D., Professor Emeritus of Biblical Litera- 
ture of Lake Forest College. 


Hersert McComs Moore, 
President of Lake Forest University. 


Lake Forest, Illinois. 


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